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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



RELIGION AND BUSINESS 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 



MEN OF AFFAIRS 



HENRY A. STIMSON 

PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CONGREGATIONAL 
CHURCH 




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NEW YORK 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 
& COMPANY (Inc.) 

l82 FIFTH AVENUE 



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Copyright, 1894, by 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 

(incorporated) 



PRESS OF 

EDWARD O. JENKINS' SON, 

NEW YORK. 



BUSINESS MEN 

TO WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY PRIVILEGE TO PREACH, 
AMONG WHOM ARE SOME OF THE NOBLEST 
MEN AND THE PUREST, TRUEST CHRIS- 
TIANS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Fishers op Men 9 

II. God as a Partner 27 

III. Business in Religion 41 

IV. Religion in Business 57 

Y. Business and Christian Service .... 75 

VI. The Demand for Progress 93 

VII. The Home and the Business 109 

VIII. The Sure Promise 123 

IX. Christ and the Poor 135 



FISHERS OF MEN". 



" And He saith unto them, Follow me, and I will 
make you fishers of men. And they straightway 
left their nets and followed Him."— Matt. iv. 19 20. 



(» 



FISHERS OF MEN. 

LUKE tells us that the call of the disciples fol- 
lowed immediately upon the miraculous draught 
of fishes. You remember that Peter, with Andrew, 
his brother, and James and John, his partners, were 
engaged in their avocation of fishermen upon the 
Lake of Galilee, when Jesus came to them. It is 
said that to-day one little crazy boat is the sole 
representative of the fleet of vessels that was en- 
gaged in the business in the time of the Gospel. 
The lake is still abundantly stocked with fish. The 
catching, curing, and sale of these constituted so 
important an industry that the Jews have a tra- 
dition to the effect that one of the ten laws of 
Joshua decreed that the lake should always be open 
to all comers. Not only did the dwellers on its 
shores derive an important part of their sustenance 
from the waters of the lake, but fish formed one 
of the chief articles of their commerce with other 
places. The indications are that several, at least, 
of the apostles had acquired some property, and 
conducted what would to-day be called a fishing 
business. They employed men and boats. 

While they are engaged, then, in their daily avo- 
cation, and after the wholesome fashion of the 

(9) 



10 FISHERS OF MEN. 

olden times, when the head of an establishment 
knew the details of his business at least as well as 
his employees, and worked with them, they are in 
the boats superintending, and aiding in the draw- 
ing of the nets, Jesus comes to them along the 
shore. At the moment they have drawn the boats 
upon the beach preparatory to going home. They 
have toiled all night and have taken nothing. 

At the command of Jesus they embark and draw 
their nets once more. To their amazement the net 
is full to the point of breaking. Two boats are re- 
quired to empty it, and they both are loaded to the 
water's edge. The Lord has set the stamp of His 
approval upon their occupation. What a joy to 
them ! "What a pleasure it is to any man to have 
the choicest of bis friends, whose companionship 
he cherishes, whose influence he values, show an 
interest in his business; come to see him at it, walk 
through his store or his factory, hear the story of 
its growth, and rejoice with him in his prospects ! 
Where is the artisan so dull that he does not show 
to such a friend with pride the product of his skill? 
And here is the Lord, whom they have already 
learned to love, coming to the disciples' place of 
business, interested in their affairs ; and, what is 
more, finding them in the condition to which all 
business men, even the most successful, are exposed, 
of temporary ill-success, giving them the benefit 
of His wiser counsel and larger resources, so effect- 



FISHEES OF MEN. 11 

ively that when they act upon His suggestion and 
resume their disappointing labor, they have great 
returns. 

This was just the approving blessing that we all 
want. We each know our business better than we 
know anything else. Our heart is in it. We often 
talk differently. We wish we were out of it. We 
envy others. We say, " Times have changed." ' 
"There is no profit." "Competition is cruel." 
But after all, it is the only thing we know thor- 
oughly. The best years of our life have gone into 
it. That store, those goods, that machinery repre- 
sent just so much of your brain and heart. Per- 
haps from the day you left your father's house, or 
came to New- York a poor youth, you have worked 
in this one line. For it you have labored and 
struggled. A self-forgetfulness so constant that it 
has become a habit that sets the claim of business 
always first, patience that has brooked all forms 
of trial, labor often unrewarded and unrecognized, 
and which takes no account of weariness, cour- 
age which fire and blood, pestilence and panic have 
not daunted, have all gone into it, till you may say 
with Jacob, " These twenty years have I been with 
thee. I bore the loss of it, of my hand didst thou 
require it whether stolen by day or stolen by night. 
In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost 
by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes. v 

In any case it is your business ; all you have. I 



12 FISHERS OF MEN. 

might almost say, all you are ! What a joy it would 
be if the Lord would come to you as He did to 
Peter and John and set His blessing on your 
work! 

I am sure you would not ask at His hand a 
miraculous draught. You do not care so much for 
pecuniary success, pleasant as that would be. It 
would be enough for many of you, dear friends, 
shall I not say for all, if the Lord would come and 
bless your business ; if He would say, " This is 
honorable. This, and not something else, is what 
I want you to do. Keep on. Be calm and stead- 
fast. Here is your true service. Here you are to 
win your final reward. At least, here, where the 
necessities of life have placed you, there is nothing 
incompatible with true service, nothing to prevent 
your achieving all your heart and mine could 
desire." 

A sense of blessing such as these words give 
would have filled the disciples' hearts had Jesus 
quietly withdrawn, saying nothing more, after the 
draught of the net. If He had so done, the same 
blessing would come to us to-day, and every one of 
you business men could go to your work to-morrow 
cheered and strengthened. You would say, "If 
the Lord Jesus in the three brief troubled years of 
His earthly ministry, could care to go and help down- 
hearted and unsuccessful fishermen, He cannot be 
unmindful of me. If He were here and should 



FISHERS OF MEN. 13 

walk into my store, or stand at my bench, or sit at 
my desk, I have reason to believe that He would 
cheer and help me. In any case He would not 
disapprove because I sell dry-goods, or run a 
printing-press, or make shoes, or handle iron, or 
oil, or paper, or cloth, or what not, and tell me to 
give it up, and go and do something else." 

This is what you might say if it were not for our 
text. For we find that Jesus did not so leave the 
fishermen, saying nothing. On the contrary, when 
their net was filled, and full because He had helped 
them fill it, He gives them the sudden and unlooked- 
for command. " And He saith unto them, Follow 
me and I will make you fishers of men." And that 
there might be no mistake about it, no thought 
that He was not in earnest, the evangelist adds, 
" And they straightway left their nets and followed 
Him." 

Here, then, dear friends, where we were not ex- 
pecting it, is the lesson for us. We express it in 
these words, "Success in business, or the posses- 
sion of special and recognized talent for worldly 
things, is no ground of exemption from special 
religious service." 

It would be a false inference that, because our 
Lord called Peter and his companions to leave their 
fishing and become His apostles, every Christian 
must leave his business and go to preaching. The 
New Testament is full of the opposite truth. In- 



14 FISHERS OF MEN. 

deed far the largest number of believers must in 
every age " abide in the calling wherein he is 
called." 

But here is the real lesson. Just as little as Peter 
might have acceptably said, " Lord, I have a large 
business, indeed very large; my nets are full; unless 
I give my whole attention to them I shall suffer 
loss, therefore I cannot come." So little can the 
Christian say to-day, "Lord, you have given me 
ten talents, I have a great business, or I am in a 
first-rate place, or I see a chance of making a pile 
of money, or I have a gift for music, or art, or 
literature, and I must devote all my strength and 
care to cultivating it. I cannot take the time to do 
any religious work; or, indeed, to care particularly 
about religious things." 

Jesus' voice is heard addressing you, successful 
business men and women, you prosperous, you effi- 
cient, you hard-working ones, in the day of your 
largest prosperity, when His blessing has been 
upon you in your temporal affairs, and saying to 
you, not, "Leave your business"; not, "Disregard 
and neglect your gift"; but, "Follow me. This 
business, these gifts, you yourself, are mine. Be 
mine. Live for me. Plunge your hands into your 
business. Do it with your might, but keep your 
heart open. Lift up your eyes and look about you. 
Tou have a soul to save, and so has your fellow- 
man. These are temporal things. They perish in 



FISHERS OF MEN. 15 

the using. There are eternal things. Heed them. 
The fields are white for harvest. Follow me. Yes, 
you business men. I have work for you. I will 
make you fishers of men." 

Surely, dear friends, this is not a hard command. 
It is not so much a command as it is a promise, and 
a privilege. At your business in the day of your 
largest success, your heaviest duties, you are called 
to the special service of Christ, you are permitted 
to do your part and win your reward as fishers of 
men. Out of this your most frequent, your most 
natural excuse, there shall come, if you will, largest 
blessing. Let me unfold this truth for you. 

I know that you are ready to recognize, first of 
all, that your business, large as it may be, your 
duties, pressing as they may appear, all belong to 
God. 

I am aware that it is common to make a distinction 
between things secular and things religious. But 
the distinction is unsound and misleading. In no 
circumstances of life can we draw a line and say on 
that side lie my relations to God ; on this side my 
relations to the world. If we may venture to say 
what is the most important contribution of modern 
thought to the life of the world it is the emphasis 
which is now laid upon what is called "the im- 
manence of God," i.e., the real presence of God in 
nature as the centre and source of all existence and 
life. Men have held that God is the creator of all ; 



1G FISHERS OF MEN. 

but arresting the thought there, they have regarded 
the creation as something quite apart from the 
Creator, as something, therefore, transient, non- 
essential, and possibly in its nature harmful — in any 
case a clog and hindrance to the upward flight of 
the soul in its effort to reach its true life in God. 
Our life on earth has made certain duties necessary, 
at least to some, that the work of the world may 
go on. These are secular. We are to commiserate 
ourselves so far as we are bound by them, and to 
escape them when we may, that we may give our- 
selves to things religious : the things of God and 
the soul. 

It is an impossible distinction. It will not work. 
More than a century ago a great philosopher, Eman- 
uel Kant, from the standpoint of pure metaphysics, 
foreshadowed the difficulty into which we have fallen. 
He said, " Without God and without a world in- 
visible to us now, but hoped for, the glorious ideas 
of ethics may indeed be objects of admiration and 
approbation, but cannot be the springs of purpose 
and action." Yet men have tried to create a world 
that would run by itself. We have sought a foun- 
dation for morals in utility, or in self-interest, or in 
humanity. We have attempted to build States on 
the basis of reference only to the issues of this life. 
We have measured the relations of one State to 
another by policy. We have exalted statesmen 
who were shrewd. We have tried to shut out the 



FISHERS OF MEN. 17 

consideration of private character from the ques- 
tion of fitness for public office; we have attempted 
a scheme of general education without the Bible. 
We have suffered the Sabbath to lose its sanctity. 
In short, we have tried to do that which the philos- 
opher showed to be impossible. We have erected 
a scheme of the universe in which there shall be a 
moral law without the sanction and authority of 
religion. We have sought to set God outside of 
daily life. 

Now the reaction has come ; Philosophy, and 
Science in her larger realms, have come to our aid. 
They emphasize this truth, that God is in all life, 
or He is in none. This world is not the prelude and 
portal to another world, nor even a preparation for 
it. It is a part of it. Life does not give place to 
eternity, it stretches out into it. Eternity is here 
and now, if it is anywhere. The grave alters 
neither character nor destiny. Every act of ours, 
every duty, stands in immediate relation to God, or 
no act, no duty, can have such relations. To-day, 
to-morrow, yesterday, are to us as truly days of 
destiny as any day can be. 

In other words, the prevalent distinction between 
the secular and the religious has utterly broken 
down. A man who has one code of morals for his 
home and church, and another for his business, has 
in fact no morals. A man whose public character 
is reputable, and his private character vicious, is 



18 FISHERS OF MEN. 

without character. A man, even, who would do 
business for himself, who is indifferent to the wel- 
fare of his neighbor, who holds might to be right, 
who is cruel in competition, who cares not for the 
city in which he dwells except in those things in 
which his interests are concerned, and who would 
leave God and the ministers to look after the world 
at large, because these are things secular, and 
those things religious, has no standing ground 
whatever. He is not simply unmoral ; he is im- 
moral. A world so organized would go to ruin. 
If we are not governing our daily conduct by 
the code of heaven, we are governing it by the 
code of hell. There is no third alternative. 
The commands of God are comprehensive and 
exclusive. He is in all. All life is His. All 
that we do is to Him, or you and I are not His in 
anything. 

Consider now for a moment, in the second 
place, how this thought exalts and ennobles all 
life. 

Here and there we see a life that is beautiful 
without religion ; pure, large-minded, beneficent. 
How is it to be explained? It is a fact often 
noticed and commented upon. The late Professor 
Renan not long since referred to it as a witness of 
the survival in men of the influences of the past, 
the home in which they were bred, the faith of 
their childhood, the stock of which they come. He 



FISHERS OF MEN. 19 

speaks of such a man as being in the "shadow" 
of his past. "We might perhaps better say the 
afterglow. But that is all that can be said. It has 
no future. The children, the pupils of such a man, 
will have, as M. Renan points out, only " the shadow 
of a shadow" as their moral atmosphere. There 
is no warmth, no impulse, no life in that. It is at 
best a decadent, evanescent force. Such fine char- 
acters in their best estate are but like the fly-wheel 
of an engine which keeps up its stately motion for 
a time after the steam has been shut off. It has 
the semblance of force, but is without productive 
power. 

On the contrary, the Christian, be he high or 
low, in favorable or in adverse circumstances, if he 
is a true Christian, a child of God, has God in all 
his life. He is at his work. You see him there in 
his office, on the board of trade, at his work-bench, 
on the railway train, he is living for God ; imper- 
fectly it may be, but none the less truly. His busi- 
ness is large, his mind is full, his hours engrossed, 
but when the pressure is off, his thoughts spring back 
erect to God. His true self is there with him at 
his work, and it is his better self. There is no dis- 
tinction between them. Call his occupation " secu- 
lar " if you will : it is for this age (the world must 
have clothes, and shoes, and railways, and houses to 
dwell in), it is none the less religious, for it is 
l>ound to God. He is a layman — one of the peo- 



20 FISHERS OP MEN. 

pie, as distinct from the clergy, — but none the less 
dedicated to God and God's work, because to him 
all the people are God's. So this truth ennobles 
and glorifies common life. 

But that this ennobling of life may be to us 
something more than a sentiment, dear friends, we 
must live in this way. The Lord has spoken to us. 
He has opened to us the high place of privilege. 
Let us then, in the third and last place, ask, " What 
are some of the tests by which we may know that 
we are thus following Him ? " 

"Am I making an excuse of the pressure of 
business?" Is it leading me to do what I once 
would not have done? Is it lowering my stand- 
ard of morals and of character? Is it trespass- 
ing upon my duties in my home as a husband and 
father? Is it drying up the wells of personal re- 
ligion, shutting me out from prayer and the Bible ? 
Is it keeping me from the prayer-meeting and from 
church ? Is it an excuse from taking a part in the 
thought, the labor, the giving which are necessary 
if the cause of God is to go forward in New- 
York and in the world? That is the first ques- 
tion. Its force lies in the command of Christ 
to the disciples at the hour when their nets were 
full. 

But furthermore, we must ask ourselves, " In my 
business am I really living as a Christian ? " It is 
so easy to say that we are Christians, and all we 



FISHERS OF MEN. 21 

have is God's, and to be content with registering 
the declaration. 

" How easier far is devout enthusiasm 
Than a good action : and how willingly 
Our indolence takes up with pious rapture, 
Though at the time unconscious of its end: 
Only to save the toil of useful deeds." 

What Lessing thus expressed of himself in Ger- 
many, is as true of us to-day in America. Recently 
a young Christian said to me that one chief ob- 
stacle in the way of his religious life is the conduct 
of the superintendent of the shop in which he 
works, who is a professed Christian. 

Peter and Andrew had to leave their business to 
follow Jesus. So Jesus calls to many a lad, many a 
young man, to turn aside from tempting openings 
for business and enter the ministry. It is a rare 
privilege. The Lord has need of you as He had of 
Peter. But all cannot do this. We often think, 
" If we could only do it, how easy it would be to 
be disciples, and to win men." The Lord thinks 
differently. He needs witnesses in the machine- 
shop, in the store, in every business, as truly as in 
the ministry, and that is your duty. There died, 
not very long since, in New York, a business man 
of my acquaintance who years ago was living 
in the West. He was then young and prosperous. 
He was a Christian of high character and consecra- 
tion, and the thought came to him that he should 



22 FI8HEE8 OF MEN. 

turn aside from business and fit himself for the 
ministry. He sought counsel of his pastor, who 
said to him, " No, you have pre-eminent gifts for 
business. God has so endowed you. Accept the 
gifts and the responsibility. Do business for God." 
He took the advice. He set apart at once a certain 
and a large portion of his income to beneficence ; 
he interested himself deeply and widely in religious 
things. He lived to advanced life. A uniform and 
remarkable prosperity attended him, and when Mr. 
Winthrop Gilman died, the cause of Christianity, as 
represented by the great Presbyterian Church of 
the United States, lost one of its wisest and most 
widely useful men. 

Kemember, beloved, that God needs you more 
than He does your work in the world. Ask, then, 
constantly, "Am I His? Is my heart set on Him? 
In my affections, my desires, my purposes, my am- 
bitions, am I living for God ? is God and His cause 
my inspiration, my aim ? " 

"Follow me!" Yes, you, dear friend, who to- 
morrow must bend yourself to the weary toil of 
another week. In your counting-room, at your 
desk, in the factory, with your hands upon a full or 
a breaking net, Jesus, your Lord, has come to bid 
you follow Him. Till He releases you, you are to 
serve Him there. You are to seek no present re- 
lease. That is the post of high privilege, because 
the post of present service. 



FI8HEE8 OF MEN. 2d 

"I will make you fishers of men." How? By 
the power of Christ dwelling in you, and speaking- 
through you. "I pray not that Thou shouldest 
take them out of the world, but that Thou should- 
est keep them from the evil," is our Lord's prayer 
for you. Accept your privilege, then, and your ser- 
vice. Take up your business to-morrow, and each 
day, for God, who has placed you in it. Open your 
heart and lift up your eyes to the cause of Christ 
that you may forward it, and try so to live that at 
last of you it shall be said, " He was one, 

' ' Who from no task of Christ so'er, 
True soldier, sought indulgence. 
To him it wore so grand an air, 
Was lit with such effulgence," 

because in it you saw Christ, and found an oppor- 
tunity of serving Him. 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 



"Neither shall any man desire thy land when 
thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy 
God thrice in the year." — Exodus xxxiv. 24. 



(26) 



GOD AS A PAKTNER 

TF there is any promise in the Bible which can 
-*- be taken as meaning just what it says, it is this. 
Nothing could be more solemn than the circum- 
stances in which it was uttered. The people had 
sinned in the matter of the golden calf. The two 
tables of the law had been broken to pieces, and 
only in response to Moses' throwing himself into 
the breach and making supplication for the people, 
did the Lord refrain from visiting them in judg- 
ment, if not consuming them altogether. 

But He hearkened to the prayer of His servant. 
Alone on the smoking mount, while the conscience- 
stricken people waited in terror at its base, the 
Lord had passed before Moses, and, covered in the 
cleft of the rock from the glory which no man can 
see and live, he had heard repeated the words 
which answered the broken covenant: "The Lord, 
the Lord God merciful and gracious, long suffering 
and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping 
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans- 
gression and sin, and that will by no means clear 
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children, and upon the children's children unto 
the third and to the fourth generation." 

(27) 



28 GOD AS A PARTNER. 

Then came the repetition of the commandments 
as the basis of the new relation between God and 
His people, coupled with solemn warnings as to 
keeping them, and the certain, definite, and far- 
reaching promise of blessing, among which is this 
of our text. In the new land Israel was to be sur- 
rounded with many powerful and rapacious ene- 
mies — enemies far too great for their unaided 
strength. But Jehovah would go with them. He 
would drive out the Amorite, the Canaanite, and 
the Hittite to give them the land. And, once in it, 
their sole duty would be to live exactly as God had 
commanded them, and God would take care of the 
rest. Among other things, tbrice in the year they 
were to leave their homes and their fields and go 
up with their children to appear before the Lord 
in united and public worship. And they were to 
do it without fear of the enemies that hung about 
them eager to seize every opportunity to pounce 
upon their defenceless possessions, for the Lord 
would be their defence. So complete was to be the 
protection, that while they were away on the Lord's 
business there would even be no fighting. The 
enemy would be made to see the hopelessness of it, 
and no man would so far desire their land as to 
venture to lay hands upon it. 

" Would that we could trust God to do that now- 
adays," some one says. Hard experience has taught 
us that a man must look out for himself. He must 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 29 

keep his eye on the main chance, and let no oppor- 
tunity slip. Eeligion is all very well. The pre- 
cepts of the Bible are all right. That is the way to 
heaven. But for this life theory has to be qualified. 
Sunday-school politics don't work. Neither does 
Sunday-school business. You have to fight for 
what you get. If you go into trade you must fol- 
low the laws of trade. If you would succeed in the 
world, you must meet the world on its own ground 
and do business with the tools of business. I think 
I am not putting it too strongly. Business men 
tell me what their competitors do. Christian men 
say, "You cannot know what the pressure is until 
you are in it yourself." Young men are counselled 
to get ahead when they can. We all feel how much 
depends upon ourselves. We are tremulous lest 
we lose some passing opportunity, or lest others 
will think less well of us because we let it slip. 
The very women innocently wonder how a man 
who does not read the Sunday newspaper can get 
along without the news. The young business man 
fears if he does not go to the post-office or get his 
mail on Sunday something may happen, and the 
older one thinks that unless he disregards Sunday 
by travelling at one end of the day or the other he 
will lose something. 

Somehow we seem to drop God out ; not pro- 
fessedly but actually. God will care for us ; i.e., 
if we take good care of ourselves. God's laws are 



30 GOD AS A PARTNER. 

good and right ; i.e., if you do not apply them too 
closely, or take them too literally. We may trust 
in the Lord ; particularly if we have on our side 
the heaviest battalions. His word will do for a 
lamp for our feet, especially if we add to it con- 
siderable worldly wisdom. How utterly opposed 
to this is the word of God itself : " Trust in the 
Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine 
own understanding." " Commit thy way unto the 
Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to 
pass." "Go up to appear before the Lord thy 
God" : i.e., take that command as a type of all ; 
do what He has told you to do ; obey His word 
just as He has given it — and no man shall desire 
thy land. Did ever any trust in Him and be con- 
founded? 

This is the question, dear friends, we are all 
called to face! Are we to trim and qualify and 
walk delicately with the commandments of God, or 
are we to obey them and leave the rest to God ? 

Let us point out three or four plain truths, and 
then make an apphcation. 

First of ah, I think no one will seriously claim 
that the earth is so far developed as to have escaped 
from God's hands. "The earth is the Lord's." 
He may choose to deal with it in one way or 
another. We may trace His hand in natural law, 
or in sudden cataclysm, but that the earth did not 
create itself and does not run itself is plain. It 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 31 

was made by God and belongs to God in all its 
length and breadth, and has not for one instant 
oscaped out of His control. Its forces are His 
movements. Its laws are simply His ways, whether 
they be laws of gravitation or laws of trade. The 
swing of the planets in their courses, and the de- 
composition of the gray matter in your brain which 
issues in thought are alike obedient to Him. The 
silver and the gold — all of it — is His. And so is 
success in business, and health and prosperity, 
and fame and triumph over enemies, and the wel- 
fare of your family and all that your heart can 
wish. 

It is well to remember this : that not a man can 
get any one of these possessions, or hold it, except 
by the will of God. When God undertakes to be- 
stow it upon a man nothing can prevent his having 
it ; and when God undertakes to withhold it from 
a man no skill or cunning of his can obtain it. 
Riches take to themselves wings and fly away. 
"Why? Because God scatters them. They come 
again and our cup is full. Why? Because God 
fills it. And that whether we know the reason or 
not. Utterly above any use we may make of it is 
God's ownership of the earth and everything upon 
it. We may be permitted to understand His ways 
of dealing with it and with us by and by ; we do 
not now. But that does not alter the fact that not 
one least atom of matter, not one least impulse of 



32 GOD AS A PARTNER. 

force has escaped out of God's sure possession — 
His absolute control. 

Equally sure is it in the second place that God 
cares infinitely more for men than He does for 
property. "What shall it profit a man if he 
shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 
is not asked as a conundrum. It is the solemn an- 
nouncement of the valuation which God puts upon 
the soul. Without a moment's hesitation Jesus suf- 
fers the devils to enter the two thousand swine and 
destroy them, that the devil may the more readily 
come out of a man, because He is giving Himself to 
save men. Doing this, He can regard nothing in 
the universe for an instant as comparable in value 
to a man. When the brilliant young McCall of the 
Livingstone-Congo mission, dying, the other day in 
mid- work, said, " Lord, I gave myself, body, mind, 
and soul to Thee. I consecrated my whole being 
to Th} r service, and now if it please Thee to take 
myself instead of my work which I would do for 
Thee, what is that to me ? Thy will be done ! " 
he only fell back on the truth before us. 

Therefore, when God commanded the Israelites 
to go up to worship Him three times in the year, 
because it was His peculiar service, and they were 
to be benefited and brought nearer to Him by it, 
there was no room for any excuse on the ground 
that their work was of especial worth to God at 
home, or that the land which was now the Lord's 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 33 

needed their watchful presence. The Lord wanted 
them; the houses He would care for Himself. 

Thirdly, we learn from the text that God governs 
men through their desires. "Neither shall any 
man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to ap- 
pear before the Lord." Here two things appear — 
the hearts of God's people are released from a 
clutching desire after lands and houses and money, 
that they may be free to serve the Lord; and be- 
cause God's people have thus committed themselves 
to God their enemies are withheld by God from so 
coveting their possessions as to seek to seize them 
in their absence. "Ah! but that will not work 
nowadays," you say. " A man has to look sharply 
after his property or he will lose it. He must pro- 
tect his interests or he will suffer." Yes, but when 
you have been never so sharp, what guaranty have 
you ? See how large a percentage of business men 
sooner or later fail. In spite of all our shrewdness 
how easily riches take to themselves wings and fly 
away, and how often, while your regular business, 
that to which you give your whole thought and 
strength and all your experience, returns the small- 
est profits, some chance investment, some mere side 
interest, of which you have thought little or noth- 
ing, makes your fortune ! At least this occurs often 
enough in the business world to show that there 
are elements in the problem of worldly success 
which are not tabulated by the mercantile agencies. 



34 GOD A3 A PARTNER. 

God has His hand upon men and upon their prop- 
erty. He plays upon the keys of the human heart 
and leads men to do this or that as easily and as 
surely as He " causes it to rain upon the earth where 
no man is," or brings the seed-time and the harvest. 

If, then, it is sure that the earth is the Lord's, 
that He cares for men infinitely more than for 
property, and that He governs men through their 
desires, it is equally sure, in the fourth place, that 
God can and will give temporal prosperity to His 
children when it is for their best good. " A hun- 
dredfold in this present world," is the word of the 
New Testament. Not inevitably, or by any hard 
and fast rule or promise, still less as a bribe, but 
because He is no mere taskmaster, but a Heavenly 
Father who delights to bless, and who always gives 
out of the fullness of His father's hand when it will 
be a blessing. 

The service of our God is not a poor and nig- 
gardly service, a service of limitations and restric- 
tions, a service of loss and pain, as it is sometimes 
conceived. On the contrary, it is a right royal 
service, the service of the Lord of the universe, 
who has use for every power and faculty of the 
least and the greatest of His servants, with abun- 
dant reward and satisfying joy for all of them. 
When He says, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you," He means what He says. When 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 35 

He points to the fowls of the air and the lilies of 
the field, and says, " Take no thought, saying, what 
shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or where- 
withal shall we be clothed, — for that is what the 
heathen do, — the men who do not know God 
or believe in God, — and your Heavenly Father 
knoweth that you have need of all these things," 
ought we not, dear friends, to be willing to believe 
Him and to trust Him ? 

And now for a brief application. It is manifestly 
-wise to choose God. 

We must make some choice. Here is the earth 
and here are we. The question is not of heaven, 
and by and by, but of life and to-day. How are 
you going to live ? No ! How are you living now ? 
What is your aim, what your purpose, what are 
your principles ? « Principles ? I have no princi- 
ples ; I am in the show business," as the humorist 
said. Very well, let it be the " show business," or 
railroads, or dry-goods, or clothing, or flour, or 
stocks, or provisions, or what you will, you are 
making your decision over that. My point is that 
it is wise to choose God in your business. Do not 
reply, " It is for you, the minister, to look after our 
souls, and tell us how to get to heaven — we under- 
stand business better than you do." I still press 
upon you, that in the light of the truths we have 
been considering it is the part of wisdom to take 
God distinctly and definitely into your business, 



36 GOD AS A PARTNER. 

and from Monday morning to Saturday night to 
make your reckoning with Him. 

You would count it folly for a chemist to refuse 
to notice in an analysis an important element which 
he but imperfectly understands, or for an engineer 
to leave out of his calculations a present force that 
is inadequately measured, or for a merchant to 
ignore influences upon the market that are power- 
ful though hidden. In each instance you would say, 
" That disregarded element, that unknown quantity, 
may overthrow all your work," and that, even, in 
dealing with the simplest affairs and the most ap- 
preciable forces. But here is many a one of you 
thinking it enough that you have mastered the 
details of your business, or are giving yourself 
strenuously to the purpose of working out what 
you choose to call the practical part of your affairs 
and deliberately disregarding the one decisive in- 
fluence without which not a wheel moves in the 
factory, not a thought stirs in the brain, not a pur- 
pose reaches its result, not a plan carries its ac- 
complishment, persuading yourself that you can 
finally succeed without God. You are like the 
splendid salmon dashing here and there in the 
broad river, now out of the water, now deep be- 
neath it, now rushing down the stream, now prov- 
ing his great strength by as easily darting up it, 
delighting in difficulties, challenging dangers, alike 
master of all, but never once breaking the slender 



GOD AS A PARTNER. 37 

line to which he is hooked, never once freeing him- 
self from the power of the master hand that reels 
him in at last as he wills. Ah, dear friend, it is 
wise to make your reckoning with God. 

So, also, it is safe to trust God. Often you can- 
not see how things will come out. Before you is 
the opening door, the glittering temptation. Now 
is your chance. Catch fortune by the heel. Fickle 
dame ! She may not return. Other people do it. 
Many will call you a fool if you let it slip. Or, you 
are already in the mesh, you are doing what you 
ought not to do. Conscience troubles you, but 
how can you escape ? Here is profit. Here, and it 
may be here only, is success. Many a business 
man finds himself so circumstanced. He has been 
drawn in unwittingly. Perhaps his partner is un- 
scrupulous. Perhaps it is a custom of the trade. 
Perhaps he was swept into it by the pressure of 
competition. No matter how it came about. Here 
he is in a false position, doing dishonest or unchris- 
tian things, whatever he may be at home and in 
church, aloof from God, antagonizing God in his 
business, and persuading himself that he cannot 
succeed if he does differently. It is an old snare 
of the evil one — to get a man into a wrong position 
and then persuade him there is no way out, or no 
way except at a great loss. Is the world the Devil's, 
dear friend, or is it God's ? Is it ever safe to do 
wrong? 



38 GOD A8 A PARTNER. 

It is wise to choose God. It is safe to trust Him, 
and finally it is best to serve Him. 

You may not become rich, you may not prosper, 
you may not escape want, — God knows what is best 
for His children, — but you will be blest, you will 
have peace. God will have in you what He prizes 
above all else — a man made in His own image, a 
soul that is His own. How much God needs such 
men and how much He loves them ! By such men 
as you who know God, and believe God, and trust 
God, He keeps alive in a sinful and sordid world, 
a world skeptical of all that is pure and unselfish 
and good, the knowledge of Himself. 

" Servants of God— or sons, 
Shall I not call you ? Because 
Not as servants ye know 
Your Father's innermost mind ; 
His who unwillingly sees 
One of His little ones lost. 
Yours is the praise, if mankind 
Hath not in its march 
Fainted and fallen and died." 

And think you that your Heavenly Father will 
not, cannot provide for you and yours? Go up, 
then, and appear before Him to-day and every day 1 
Do always and everywhere what in the eyes of men, 
and in your own heart, will be your testimony to Him, 
that He is your God, and that you are His child ; 
and you need not fear about your land, no man shall 
desire it. " For the Lord knoweth the way of the 
righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.'* 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 



" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." 
— Deut. vi. 5. 

"What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul ? "— Maek via. 36. 



(40) 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

IF ever there wars a time when a line could be 
drawn around certain occupations, and it could 
be said, " Within this line the rules and methods of 
business prevail, outside of it they do not," that 
day has passed. In the management of the home, 
the school, the church, there must be system, order, 
purpose ; in short, a recognition of business and 
business ways, or success cannot be expected. 

This being true in the outer and practical life, it 
has occurred to me that something may be learned 
from it for the conduct of the inner and spiritual 
life. If business means so much and accomplishes 
so much in the world, may it not have a value if it 
can be applied to religion ? 

There are certain great principles that underlie 
all business and determine success or failure. I 
have from time to time talked on this subject with 
many successful business men, and I am surprised 
to learn what a striking unanimity there is in their 
testimony. Quite independently of what may be 
their personal character, or their religious convic- 
tions, in the main they all agree as to the principles 
of business which they regard as essential to suc- 
cess. I am encouraged to believe, therefore, that 

(41) 



42 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 



these may be helpful in throwing light on religion. 
They all agree, in the first place, that to be suc- 
cessful one must have a method, a plan, for the conduct 
of his business. 

To trust to luck, to work at haphazard, is sure 
to end in failure. Sometimes this plan is adopted 
instinctively as a result of a man's character, or his 
training. One gentleman told me that when they 
organized their firm he and his partners sat down 
and in long and careful conference determined the 
plan by which the business was to be conducted. 
This is perhaps unusual, as generally only those 
unite whose methods already harmonize. But plan 
there must be. 

Moreover, the plan, once settled, must be adhered 
to. It must not be changed under stress of weather 
or adverse circumstances. A leading miller said 
to me some time since, " Our plan is to succeed by 
making the best flour that can be produced. We 
believe it is the surest way of success. If things 
go against us, and some one makes better flour, we 
do not rest until we learn how to inrprove our grade." 
Another manufacturer said, " One of our rules is to 
make a profit on every order we take. If we find 
we are losing orders we don't change our rule ; we 
study economy until we discover some way of doing 
the work at a smaller cost." Another has quite a 
different method. He feels the need of a very wide 
and large market for his product, and to secure it 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 43 

he will often sell for a time below cost. -But what- 
ever the plan adopted, all agree that to have no 
plan or to change one's plan from day to day is as 
disastrous as to change one's business. And for 
the same reasons. A man cannot be a grocer this 
year, a dry-goods dealer the next, a banker the 
third, and hope to succeed. He must commit 
himself to some one business ; fix his plan for 
conducting it ; and then stick to it. 

Furthermore, I find in the second place that all 
agree that a man cannot succeed without giving his 
undivided attention to his business. 

He must make a business of it. Very few men 
can successfully conduct several kinds of business 
at the same time. New York is full of men who 
have failed from dabbling in things foreign to their 
legitimate line. Outside things may be taken up 
merely for recreation or rest. If they compete with 
a man's regular business in their demand upon 
either his time or his thought, they are sure to 
work him evil. One thing with all the mind, the 
heart, the strength, appears to be the rule. 

But this requires, in the third place, that a man 
have a business to which he can give himself. He 
must regard it as worthy of his efforts. He must 
believe in it, and take pride in it. 

" We stake all we have on our business," said a 
manufacturer to me. "We draw out of it only 
enough to live on, and we are living economically. 



44 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

We put all we can into our plant." Others stake 
everything on their plan of accumulation. They 
sacrifice comfort, ease, sometimes even friends or 
character itself, to the chosen line of success. A 
man can hardly hope to succeed in anything unless 
he puts his heart into it. He cannot put his heart 
into it unless lie believes in it. A man, therefore, 
must have some business in which he can believe, 
and of which, as a measure of his success, he can 
be proud. 

Again, I find, in the fourth place, that a special 
training is regarded as very essential to business 
success. 

" It is absolutely indispensable in our business," 
said one merchant. " We have daily to make de- 
cisions on the instant, which largely involve our 
success or failure. No man can do it who is not 
trained to the business " " Competition," said 
another, " is now so close that education in busi- 
ness is going to be a more and more important 
element of success. It did not require much train- 
ing when a retailer could make a dollar of profit 
on a sack of flour. It is a different matter when 
he has to sell it on a margin of a few cents." 
Many fail from too great haste to get rich. They 
are not content with slow accumulations ; nor are 
they willing to begin at the bottom and work up. 
Patient, steady, constructive growth is more im- 
portant to-day than it ever was. 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 45 

Once more : all agree that to succeed a man must 
be prompt to adapt himself to changes which from time 
to time take place both in markets and methods of 



One manufacturer said to me, " So great are the 
changes in our business that I would rather take 
into my mill a green hand than one who learned 
the trade ten years ago, and has learned nothing 
since." Men are everywhere on the lookout for 
novelties, in fabric, in style, in adaptation. A mer- 
chant said, "We used to depend for our trade 
largely upon advertising. We should soon run out 
if we did that now. We hunt up customers and 
keep after them." Even the banks, I am told, have 
greatly changed their methods of business within 
recent years. 

Again, and this point is somewhat remarkable in 
view of what is constantly said about the dishonesty 
of business men. I find that our successful business 
men are doing business on the basis of trust in others. 
One says, "In our business we get security when 
we can, but a man cannot do business who does 
not trust somebody." There is no such thing as 
trusting no one and succeeding, or doing business 
on an absolute certainty. Another says, "We do 
business on the basis of our belief that men are 
honest. We trust those with whom we deal, abso- 
lutely. Our business rests almost entirely upon 
verbal contracts " Another of whom I inquired, 



46 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

said, "Certainly, the basis of our business is the 
confidence we have in others. We never could 
have succeeded unless others had had this confi- 
dence in us." "This is the whole foundation of 
my business career," said one gentleman with evi- 
dent feeling. " If men had not trusted me I could 
have done nothing." The tendency of business 
seems to establish the principle that a man's word 
is his capital. It is conclusive proof that the entire 
structure of commercial enterprise is erected on 
the doctrine of probabilities. Certainty is not re- 
quired, and is not to be had. Faith in one another, 
faith in one's judgment, faith in one's principles 
and methods of business, is the foundation of every 
successful career. Unless a man is willing to ac- 
cept this, and to order his affairs by a reasonable 
faith, he cannot do business, much less succeed in 
business. 

Still further, I find all to agree that attention to 
details is a first principle of success. One man said 
to me, " We know what every man in our employ 
is doing, all the time." Another said, " My partner 
or myself is familiar with every department of our 
business. We watch every man and every process. 
We keep exact account of every item." " We at- 
tend more closely to detail," said a manufacturer, 
" than any other mill in the country." " I mark 
the price on every article in my store," said another 
man. "We know exactly what every one of our 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 47 

salesmen is making for us," said still another. A 
man content with, generalities, or who drifts with 
the crowd, cannot succeed nowadays. 

Finally, I observe that successful business men 
are liberal in their dealing ivith others and exact in 
their dealing with themselves. 

One man, who holds himself to the most careful 
rules, and prides himself upon his exact account- 
ability, and that of every man in his employ, says 
that as a matter of policy his firm makes it a rule 
to settle every claim liberally, even when it involves 
temporary loss. It promotes good-will and helps 
business. Another says, " We give a customer the 
benefit of the doubt." And another, though I fear 
his kind is rare, "We could get our labor consider- 
ably cheaper, but we want the good-will of our 
men." It seems to be a rule of successful business, 
especially on the largest scale, that while a man can 
hardly be too generous in his business dealings 
with others, and that narrowness or closeness in 
this relation is sure to defeat itself, in dealing 
with oneself a man can hardly be too exacting. 
He must have himself always in hand. He must 
know his own purposes ; he must constantly revise 
his knowledge and keep his experience brought 
down to date ; he must deny himself in leisure, in 
luxury, in ease. He must have an aim and a plan 
and hold to them. He must concentrate his mind, 
his strength, his heart upon what he has to do, or 



48 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

he cannot succeed. It is no wonder that when a 
man does business in this way he takes pride in his 
business. He may at times get discouraged and 
talk differently, but where is there a successful 
business man who, beyond the money he is mak- 
ing, does not take pride in his business, his factory, 
his store, his system, as representing himself in his 
effort to do his best ? 

There, I believe you have what you will recog- 
nize as the more important principles that underlie 
successful business life. The list might easily be 
enlarged. Doubtless there are other rules or prin- 
ciples of more immediate application to your own 
especial affairs. But these are enough, and they 
are genuine. Now let me ask you to turn with 
them to the matter of religion. 

First answer me this. ""What shall it profit a 
man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul ? " Don't turn away from it You have 
said that a man must choose an object in life, and 
set his heart upon it. You have said that it must 
be an object worthy of him, worthy of his best 
efforts, worthy of all there is in him ; or he cannot 
do his best, he cannot hope fairly to succeed. 
Before we go any further, answer me this : You 
successful business man, you young man who would 
be successful. You have made your choice, you 
are in full career, you have staked everything 
gladly, willingly, on your business or your pro- 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 4:9 

fession ; tell me what will it profit you, where you 
will be at the end, if you gain all you seek— and 
lose your own soul? 

Again, you have said, a man must have a fixed 
and earnest purpose ; a plan, clear and intelligent, 
if he would succeed in business — how many of you 
are applying this principle to religion ? I ask you 
unconverted men, and you who are contented with 
a merely nominal religion. Have you a plan, a pur- 
pose ? You have wishes, hopes ! You mean, some 
day, to be a different man from what you are. 
How different this from your method in the affairs 
of the world. Where is your honest, manly pur- 
pose ? Where is the settled plan by which you are 
approaching steadily, surely, with the determina- 
tion to succeed, the salvation of your soul ? You 
meant once to be a Christian. You once were in 
earnest, and you have grown cold. You were of- 
fended by the conduct of some Christian. You did 
not like what was said in the pulpit. You were not 
pleased at the prayer-meeting. And you are the 
man who says that a man cannot succeed in busi- 
ness who does not stick to his purpose and hold 
his plans no matter what arises to thwart him. 
You were once in full view of Christianity. Where 
are you now ? What is your purpose now ? 

A man must give his undivided attention to his 
business if ,he would succeed in it. " Undivided 
attention ! " " Ye shall seek for me and find me 



50 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

when ye shall search for me with all your heart." 
That looks as if the method of religion were very 
much like the method of business, does it not ? 
You know the conditions of success in business, 
and you are only too eager to meet them. Do you 
meet them, are you meeting them in religion ? 
Why do you go on from year to year in this half- 
hearted, slow-footed way, hanging on the skirts of 
the sanctuary, keeping within reach of the Gospel, 
but without paying any real attention to it ? Do- 
ing nothing to make it real to yourself ? 

You say, a man, to succeed, must stake some- 
thing on his business ; he must believe in it. How 
much have you staked on Christianity ? " If Christ 
be not risen from the dead, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain/' Can you say 
that ? Has Jesus Christ risen for you ? Have you 
staked the forgiveness of your sins, and the hope 
of heaven, on Him as a living, present Saviour, 
dwelling in your heart, inspiring and governing 
your life ? Don't put the question aside. Answer 
it fairly. 

You say, a man must have training in business. 
How much have you in religion ? How much are you 
trying to get ? Do you really believe your maxim ? 
Is a man's place, is his joy, his usefulness, his 
growth in spiritual things to be determined, as in 
business, by his training for these things? Is it 
true that the nobler the work a man would do, the 



BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 51 

higher the prize he would win, the more necessary 
the spiritual training ? Is it true that in religion 
early years are best years, and that a man can never 
make up for early years thrown away, or Bible neg- 
lected, or opportunities squandered, or commands 
of God disobeyed, or God kept far off ? Is all this 
true ? Deep in your heart do you know it to be 
true ? And yet you are content to put off becoming 
a Christian, Or content not to be a truer one ? 

You say, a man must be watchful of changes in 
methods of business. And how many of you are 
waiting for some old-time experience to come round 
again ? Once you were stirred by some great 
preacher, and you are patiently waiting now to be 
stirred by some powerful appeal. Once you were 
caught up in a great revival and swept on to the 
very gates of the kingdom. You sit there helpless 
to-day, waiting a return of the wave. Once you 
were under deep conviction of sin. God strove with 
you manifestly. The fountains of your heart were 
broken up, but you held out until the springs ran 
dry. Once you were interested in the Christian 
life and service. Now you are waiting for that 
witness to come back to life. Thus in one way and 
another you excuse yourselves. 

"Why, dear friends, does business refuse to go 
round in a circle? Why do things happen but 
once, and nothing repeat itself ? Are the drowsy and 
the careless left behind, and is there no progress 



52 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

in God's ways ; has His voice only one call, is there 
no present requirement, no living, earnest, present 
necessity upon you if you would enter the kingdom 
of heaven ? " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ! " 
What does that mean except that you are to arise 
at once ? " Choose you this day whom ye will serve." 
What does that mean except you are to decide — 
to be wholly Christ's — now ? 

This is God's method, to lay responsibilit}' upon 
us each for himself, to address us thus personally-, 
as I am trying to address you, and to say, " Arise, 
follow me." Shake off your lethargy. Make your 
decision, and do it now. 

You have said a man must act upon probabili- 
ties. No business can be done otherwise. And 
there is no religion apart from faith. God says, 
" Trust me. There is my word ; believe it, obey 
it, and thou shalt live." But you say, '• I am not 
convinced. I want a certainty. I do not yet un- 
derstand it all. I do not see through to the very 
end." No, you never will, and in your daily affairs 
you never do. Things are not so constituted. 

Exactly in the line of what we have shown to be 
the underlying principle of daily life — namely, 
trust, — God draws us to Himself. We are to be- 
lieve in Him ; and because we believe in Him we 
are to give ourselves to Him. 

Have you done it ? Come down to details. Look 
into your life, and into your heart. Are you living 



BUSINESS m RELIGION. 53 

for God, really, truly ? Not, are you professing to ? 
But are you doing it ? Are you looking after your 
motives, your purposes, your thoughts, your words ? 
Are all made to tell for God and for Christ because 
you are His ? If not, what ? 

You could not succeed in business otherwise ; 
can you serve God, can you be truly His, without 
the same watchfulness of little things ? 

Be as liberal as you will in your judgments of 
others ; are you exact with yourself ? Ah, dear 
friends, how many deceive themselves here. You 
do not believe in the eternal punishment of the im- 
penitent sinner. You do not believe that God is 
angry with the wicked every day. Woe to you if 
you are taking advantage of your liberality to others 
to apply this doctrine to yourself. Where is the man 
who could hope to succeed in business on that prin- 
ciple ? You never do it. You hold yourself to 
strictest accountability. You do not rest until you 
make every uncertainty tell in jour favor. Suppose 
the word of God is true. Suppose, that except a 
man believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and go into 
the other world His servant, His child, he cannot be 
saved ; what then, dear friend ? Where will you 
stand ? You are dealing with a righteous as well 
as a loving God. An account is to be given to 
Him. Are you ready for it ? 

And are some of you ashamed to be Christians ? 
You rejoice in your business. You are proud to 



54 BUSINESS IN RELIGION. 

be identified with it. You want to be known as 
one of the merchants, one of the manufacturers, 
one of the business men of New York. You hesi- 
tate to be known as one of the Christians of New 
York. Is there anything nobler ? There goes 
A. B., one of our merchants, one of our lawyers, 
one of our bankers ; yes, but more than that, and 
before all that, one of our Christians, — a follower 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. A prominent believer ; 
a conspicuous one. Why ? Because his whole life 
proclaims it. He is a Christian with a purpose. 
He believes in his religion ; he stakes everything 
upon it ; he lives up to it ; he glories in it. And 
when he dies the town will lose in him, before all 
else, a man who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and 
faithfully served Him. Is not that something worth 
living for ? Will you not then, after this fashion, 
carry your business into your religion ? Begin to 
be a Christian now, and be such a Christian that 
the angels and the little children may be glad 
over you. 






EELIGION IN BUSINESS. 






" Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well 
with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their do- 
ings. Woe unto the wicked ; it shall be ill with 
him ; for the reward of his hands shall be given 
him."— Isaiah iii. 10-11. 



(56) 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 

T AM to speak to you this morning upon " Relig- 
-*- ion in Business." Let me disclaim at the out- 
set the thought of possessing any special wisdom 
with reference to business affairs. I have no pre- 
scription for ensuring success. Religion in busi- 
ness does not mean success in business. No amount 
of religion will make afterthought serve for fore- 
thought, or erroneous judgment take the place of 
correct judgment, or heedlessness do the work of 
painstaking, or ignorance answer for experience. 
Religion does not make the small great, or the sim- 
ple shrewd, or the weak strong, or the sick well, or 
the foolish wise — at least not in business. 

But for all that, G-od's word abundantly declares 
that there is a very close connection between busi- 
ness and religion. If there is one thing plainer 
than another in the Bible it is that God makes a 
difference between honesty and dishonesty, and 
that He rewards men according to their deeds. 
"Whatever may be the relative standing of men 
upon earth, God tries them by their integrity, or 
want of integrity, and blesses the one while He 
curses the other. 

Here, then, is the ground on which I have some- 

(57) 



58 RELIGION IN BC8INE88. 

thing to say to you this morning. I have not to 
teach you how to make money, but how to serve God. 

Furthermore, let me say that I know something 
of your burdens and perplexities. Far be it from 
me to make light of tbem. Because the world at 
large knows what are the temptations of business 
men, the world gives high honor to honorable men 
of business. Christian men are the backbone of the 
business community. I well remember when, as a 
boy, I was a clerk in a great house down-town, hear- 
ing a fellow-clerk, an infidel and a foreigner, curse 
because in New York, if a merchant was known to 
be a church-member, he had better credit. What 
was it but his unwilling testimony to the fact that 
the average Christian business man is more trust- 
worthy than the average business man not a Chris- 
tian. "We may praise God that it is so generally true. 

At the same time we must not be blind to the 
struggle. All do not stand. Temptations ai-e hot. 
The pressure is often terrific. Many get involved 
in doubts and perplexities and weak compromises. 
Many fall. What can we do to clear the vision, to 
brace the courage, to strengthen the purpose ? 
How can we help one another to serve God brave- 
ly, each in his place ? 

Let me put what I have to say in the form of 
a few propositions which will, I trust, need but little 
discussion, and may serve to make some things 
clearer. 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 59 

First, you will all admit that religion in business 
is the same as religion out of business. 

When God says, " The soul that sinneth it shall 
die," He does not add, " Except the sin be a com- 
mercial sin." When He says, " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor 
as thyself," He does not say, " Except you are in 
business." When a man approaching the question 
of personal religion feels as most do, that he must 
begin to do business differently, his feeling is per- 
fectly correct. There are not two standards of 
morality : one for private life and Sundays, and 
the other for business and week days ; one for the 
pulpit, the other for the street. 

Christianity has but one code of morals. I know 
it is often claimed that there are two, and if this 
proposition were opened to discussion a good deal 
would be urged about the necessity of doing busi- 
ness in a different way from that enjoined in the 
New Testament, and that many Christian men do 
business in that way. But when all is said, there 
remains in your heart the deep conviction that 
there can be but one right way, and you despise 
the man who, professing to be a Christian, departs 
from it. Religion in business is the same as relig- 
ion out of business. 

Second, if a man's religion does not keep him 
honest, it is worthless. 

This does not mean, " If a man's religion does 



60 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 

not keep him as honest as other men are in the 
same business." Nor, " If a man's religion does 
not keep him honest when dishonesty is likely to 
be found out." It carries the question back to the 
forum of a man's own conscience, and the laws of 
God. If a man's religion does not hold him to do- 
ing that and that only which is right in God's 
sight, and which needs no justifying, his religion 
is so far worthless. 

He may be a decent man ; he may be a success- 
ful man ; he may be an honest man, as the world 
counts honesty ; but a religious man — a Christian 



man— no 



The sole function of religion is to bring a man in 
heart and life into accord with God, and to keep 
him there, and any man whose religion does not 
hold him to that standard, in business or out of 
it, is self-deceived. 

I do not say he may not at last be forgiven. 
God's uncovenanted mercies are great. But such 
religion as a present reality, and as a witness to 
God, is vain. 

Third, there is no honest occupation in which an 
honest man is required to be dishonest. 

I speak of honest men, not of those who would 
like to be honest, but are not. There are such 
men, who approve honesty, who deeply regret that 
they are in circumstances which compromise them, 
who mean some day to do differently, and who are 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 61 

very anxious to be taken, like a patent medicine, 
at their estimate of themselves. Such men, I 
know, are often engaged in honest occupations in 
which they think they are required to be dishonest. 
But I am speaking of honest men ; and of them I 
say, that in no honest occupation are they required 
to be dishonest. 

Why ! dear friends, God made the world, and 
He made it right. We are here to till the earth 
and to subdue it. God has established the condi- 
tions of successful existence. You talk of the laws 
of trade. So far as tbere are laws — i. e., fixed rela- 
tions from which sound principles of procedure can 
be deduced, — they are as truly God's laws as are 
the Ten Commandments. God has not made the 
earth, and then left it to be set to any purpose and 
used for any iniquitous device that man may con- 
coct. It is His world. He is everywhere in it, 
guiding, controlling, accomplishing with it His own 
purpose, as truly now as at the beginning. Despite 
the loss and confusion from man's wrong-doing, 
the world is steadily advancing in the accumula- 
tions of industry and all that constitutes temporal 
progiess. 

Compare our circumstances with those of our 
ancestors, say five hundred years ago. Their floors 
had no carpets, their rooms no chairs, their win- 
dows no glass, their tables no forks, their houses 
no books. Societv meant the unrestrained domin- 



f>2 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 

ion of the strong over the weak. The laborer lived 
in a hovel and slept on the ground, was unshod 
and almost unclad. Within the memory of men now 
living steam in all its thousand applications, elec- 
tricity, illuminating gas, coal oil, stoves, anthracite 
coal, cheap postage and transportation ; dress goods 
printed from rollers, cheap cotton fabrics and 
scores of articles now in common use, have been 
either invented or given to the world. The average 
comfort and the average possessions of men have 
vastly increased ; and that despite all that men by 
war and crime have done to prevent it. The poor- 
est laborer enjoys many things daily which one 
hundred years ago the wealthiest man could not ob- 
tain. Can you suppose for a moment that this vast 
advance, this steady and rapid accumulation of the 
best products of industry and skill, is the result of 
fraud or dishonesty, or is the outcome of obedience 
to laws, whether they be of trade or of the State, 
which are antagonistic to the laws of God ? Doubt- 
less there is much rascality in the world. Doubtless, 
" Because," as of old, " sentence against an evil 
work is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons 
of men is wholly set in them to do evil." But two 
things cannot be denied : that God made the world, 
and men to live in it ; and that the world, according 
to God's plan, is steadily advancing in the accumu- 
lations of man's industry and the facilities of man's 
life. 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 63 

Therefore, progress cannot rest upon dishon- 
esty. The occupations of men by which the world 
is helped forward are honest occupations, and hon- 
est men can engage in them and deal honestly. It 
is idle for a man to say that he cannot succeed in 
"business and be honest. It is untrue. The whole 
history of the race is against it. Why have vice 
and immorality eaten out the heart, and so destroy- 
ed nations which the most vigorous foes could not 
overthrow ? It is because vice and immorality ar- 
rayed God against them, and the very forces of life 
and of society which God has established, and which 
they disregarded or defied, mustered to destroy them. 

Is not this just as true of dishonesty as of vice ? 
Where is there a single business house that has 
been built up and stood through the centuries but- 
tressed in dishonesty ? There is not one. The 
very thought is absurd. The hosts of God are 
arrayed against such business, and sooner or later 
they hurl it to the ground. Has not the world 
long since recognized this ? Has it not framed for 
its own selfish ends the maxim, " Honesty is the best 
policy " ? Victor Hugo said Napoleon failed at 
Waterloo, not because of the rain the previous night, 
not because of Grouchy's delay ; but because he 
" embarrassed God." So business men fail when 
they think they can insure success by business 
methods that embarrass God. 

Fourth, any occupation in which a man cannot 



64 



KELIGION EN BUSINESS. 



be honest, or thinks he cannot be honest, and suc- 
ceed, is for him a nefarious occupation, and he 
should quit it. 

God does not require that we succeed in what 
we undertake. He does require that we main- 
tain our character. If we find ourselves placed 
where we cannot do that, our course is perfectly 
plain. The occupation, be it what it may, is for us 
nefarious. It is of no consequence who may be in 
it, or what others may think of the propriety of it ; 
if you are persuaded that you cannot succeed in 
the business in which you are engaged without do- 
ing what in your heart you feel to be dishonest, 
your duty is, at any cost, promptly to get out of it. 
Now, with these propositions before us, which I 
believe to be, and which I think you will accept as 
foundation truths, let me try to say some things 
which will strengthen you against temptation. 

I believe that loose business habits have much to 
do with loose business morals. 

"What are the loose business habits ? They are 
numerous. Trusting to luck is one of them. Hop- 
ing that things will come out right when you don't 
take the trouble to see that they do. Ignorance 
as to exact facts. Half-understood and indefinite 
agreements. Carelessness as to your spoken word. 
Promising to do or agreeing to do what you have 
no thought of doing exactly. Easy excuses with 
yourself for disregarding other people's interests, 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 65 

or wasting their time in not keeping your appoint- 
ments to the minute. That slovenliness in dealing 
with employees which takes no note of idleness and 
incompetency, and equally fails to appreciate fidel- 
ity and to reward valuable service. Overlooking 
the human element that enters into all work and 
trade, and makes a friend worth more than tem- 
porary profit. Foolish competition that thinks it 
does not matter how you get your business pro- 
vided you get it. Untruthful advertising. 

Do you think a man can tell lies in the newspa- 
per, or in his circulars to his trads, without becom- 
ing careless of truth, and even blind to truth in 
other relations ? Do you think a merchant can de- 
ceive his customers without teaching his clerks to 
deceive both them and him ? A self-respecting 
man does not easily fall before temptation. A busi- 
ness man who has himself well in hand can general- 
ly keep his business in hand. 

A second snare to business men is moral cow- 
ardice. 

Bear with me. I must call things by their right 
names. I want to help you if I can. I know some- 
thing of the pressure that you are under. You feel 
that you must succeed. You have a family to sup- 
port, or a position to establish. You know that for 
a man of character to fail is to inflict a more or 
less serious evil on the community. It brings 
Christian character into question ; it does harm to 



06 RELIGION IX BUSINESS. 

religion. The cause of his failure may have been 
entirely beyond his control. The world only knows 
that he has made engagements which he cannot 
meet, and his name is dishonored. You are under 
obligation, therefore, to succeed. 

Moreover, you are in competition with unscrupu- 
lous men, or perhaps you happen to be in partner- 
ship with them. They are found in all departments 
of business. Men who know no law but self-inter- 
est ; they care nothing for God ; they have no 
conscience ; they misrepresent goods; they de- 
ceive the public ; they hesitate at no mean advan- 
tage ; they jump at the chance to work you harm. 
I know all this. But for this very reason the temp- 
tation to moral cowardice is strong. The pressure 
is so great you are carried away in spite of 
yourself. Satan springs upon you sudden tempta- 
tion. He touches you in the sensitive spot. Your 
trade will be injured. A customer may be won 
away, and in the fear of thus giving advantage to 
competitors in a struggle that is so hot, you betray 
yourself. You let down or hide your principles. 
You give place to the devil. It is, perhaps, little 
to be wondered at, but, dear friends, it is none the 
less disastrous. 

A rival manufacturer is adulterating his goods ; 
how can you afford to sell a genuine article ? A 
dangerous competitor has opened a line of trade 
from which you have scrupulously held aloof. You 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 67 

•could strain a point, and call it legitimate, but hith- 
erto you have not done it Your conscience would 
not let you. But it is very profitable. 

Or you can advance your work, or gain a little 
advantage by having your clerks work on Sunday, 
or by getting your mail on Sunday ; or you consent 
to work on Sunday yourself. Or you learn that 
your neighbor has discovered a trick by which he 
-gets great advantage, we will say, of the railroad 
company. His shipping tickets give wrong weights ; 
he overloads cars ; he ships goods under false de- 
scriptions ; he secures wrong classification. He 
pays commission on surreptitious rebates ; or per- 
haps he sells his goods by bribing the purchasing 
agent. Now, shall you not do the same ? 

Or you have suffered loss through fraud or theft, 
and it will cost you some trouble, and possibly fur- 
ther loss, to punish the wrong-doer, and do your 
part toward protecting the community. 

Or the community is seeking to rid itself of some 
public evil, and there is occasion for united pro- 
test ; and you may lose trade and offend some cus- 
tomer if your name is seen with others, if your 
voice is heard on the side of the public welfare. 
I have known wealthy business men, Christian men, 
to hasten to take their names off such protests, or 
asseverate that they signed them through a misun- 
derstanding, when they had been published, because 
they were suddenly alarmed. " "We sell our mer- 



68 RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 

chandise, not our principles," said one indignant 
merchant to some customers who waited upon him 
after such a protest had been signed. The snares 
of Satan are innumerable, and many a weak and 
timid soul is beguiled. How cheaply many men 
sell themselves ! But Satan is a coward. I received, 
the other day, a communication from a detective 
agency which had as a standing heading these 
words, " Responsible shadows and private watch- 
men furnished." That is exactly what is wanted. 
A responsible shadow, and a private watchman ! 
Christian men who watch the workings of their 
own thoughts, and with such a sense of exact ac- 
countability that the very beginnings of temptation 
are discovered, and whose shadow even is respon- 
sible. They do nothing, however unwittingly, of 
which they have reason to be ashamed. 

Once more. The community at large owes it to 
business men that the temptation to dishonesty be 
made as slight as possible. 

This in several ways. You should refuse to trade 
with dishonest men. It is not enough that you are 
honest j*ourself. You have not done your whole 
duty until you have striven to make honesty success- 
ful by boycotting dishonesty. 

If a man can cheat you, and still have your cus- 
tom ; if a firm can be notoriously untruthful and 
dishonest, and still hold a large business and make 
plenty of money, and nobody seem to care so long 



RELIGION IN" BUSINESS. 69 

as goods can be had of them cheap, what wonder 
that the defense of honest tradesmen is broken 
down, and business turned into a headlong scram- 
ble for shekels. 

For the same reason the community owes it to 
business men that they make the laws such as to 
remove and not increase the temptation to dishon- 
esty. I have nothing to say as to the inherent 
desirability and wisdom of the Interstate Commerce 
laws — but look at the situation as it has been under 
this law. I recently sat in a company of most re- 
spectable merchants, and heard one of their num- 
ber say, " You know that three-fourths of you gen- 
tlemen could be sent to the penitentiary for what 
you are doing under that law." And what was the 
reply ? A gentle and genial smile around the cir- 
cle. Not a word, not a look, not a hint of indignant 
protest at such an amazing charge ! 

A prominent railway official, a gentleman and a 
Christian, said to me not long since, " It is simply 
impossible to do business honorably. I have thrown 
honor to the winds." Think of a community get- 
ting into a condition in which its greatest corpora- 
tions, the railways, and its merchants alike unite 
to do business by evasions, and subterfuges, and 
go-betweens, and rebates, and greenbacks carried 
around in satchels and passed through clerks into 
the hands of reputable merchants ! Such a system 
would have made apples and a serpent superfluous 



70 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 



in the Garden of Eden. It would breed a race of 
knaves anywhere. Though recent decisions have 
relieved the pressure, the law remains. 

Then when you have proper laws, you need to 
set honest men to administer them. Look at the 
state of things to-day in New York. This great 
city left year by year in the hands of a gang of 
thieves; the very Legislature of the State the instru- 
ment of doing its will. Our local courts are a 
mockery of justice, our police a system of constant 
oppression. No man is safe in person or property 
or business. Money or a "pull" carries every- 
thing. Women are assaulted, men are kicked 
about, even in the court-room; petty tradesmen 
are bled by officials of every grade, and no man 
can do business without exposure to all sorts of 
obstructions and blackmail. Whole departments 
of the municipal administration are so corrupt as 
to be notorious. " Of course, what do you suppose 
we are here for ? " was the answer of an official the 
other day to one of our business men, inquiring if 
he was expected to pay for a mere matter of routine 
sanction, to which he was entitled freely. The 
most sacred right a man has is the right to choose 
his religious faith, and we see that right imperilled. 
In New York a public man is not free to join the 
Koman Catholic Church without the suspicion that 
he is doing it for office or influence. And you 
lawyers and business men talk lightly of these 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 71 

things, as if they could not be helped, and adjust 
yourselves to them complacently in the calm con- 
sciousness that you at least are safe. 

Much more might be said, but surely this is 
enough to show how great are the responsibilities 
of a Christian business man, and how great are his 
privileges. He is a man chosen of the Lord, and 
set by Him in the midst of a sinful and rebellious 
world to witness for Him. Honor and truth and 
righteousness are on His side. He is in the fore- 
front of the battle. Yes, you, dear friends, are 
standard-bearers for Christ. What if the conflict 
is hot? What if the smoke of battle fills the air? 
What if many fall? "Blessed is the man that 
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor 
standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the 
seat of the scornful." " Set yourselves, stand ye still 
and see the salvation of the Lord with you," is the 
Lord's voice to you to-day, as it was to the men of 
old. Only be true to your calling. 

Eemember that there is woe to him that gains 
an evil gain, for he sins against his own soul. 
Watch well your conscience. Respect its question- 
ings. Guard yourself against haste to be rich. A 
large business is a large trust; be sure you can be 
trusted before you set your heart on the large busi- 
ness. Many a man loses his head in a high place 
who walked safely when he was in a low one. I 
have known more than one to reverse the parable. 



72 



RELIGION IN BUSINESS. 



He got along very well so long as the Lord gave 
him only one pound. When he found himself 
possessed of ten he went to pieces. 

Your wives have a great deal to do with this. 
When the wife gets into her head the idea that her 
husband is going to be a rich man, and begins to 
urge him on, then there is peril. How often your 
plain, hard-working, unambitious husband who was 
but now generous, friendly, helpful to all, is seen 
becoming with prosperity close, selfish, and vain- 
glorious. The Lord gives such people the desire 
of their heart, and sends leanness into their soul. 
"A snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts that 
drown men in destruction and perdition ! " It is 
well not to be too eager for success. You may be 
sure of wealth of character without fear, but wealth 
and character come not surely together. A Chris- 
tian business man may well be proud of such suc- 
cess as God gives him; and may rightly pray that 
God will suffer him to die in the harness. He 
needs no larger field to fight his fight, and win his 
crown for God. 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE 



"I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that 
abidetb in me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
forth much fruit/'— John xv. 5. 



(74) 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

I WANT to set before you to-day not so much the 
duty, as the privilege of the life of a Christian. 
It is the privilege of service; a service accepted of 
the Lord and fruitful in His kingdom. I want to 
show you that such a service is not the privilege of 
the favored few; but that it is the high calling of 
all who love the Lord Jesus Christ; no matter how 
limited their gifts or how pressing their cares. 

You will recognize the text as from our Saviour's 
farewell address to His disciples. The little com- 
pany had, perhaps, paused in the court of the 
house where in the upper chamber they had just 
celebrated the supper, and where the Saviour had 
spoken the comforting and tender words of the 
14th chapter of John, in order that they might 
hear further from Him before they go out to face 
the final separation. 

His words turn upon the essential relation that 
is henceforth to exist between Him and His dis- 
ciples. "I am the true vine," is His first word. 
There are other vines of which we are branches, 
but this is the true vine from which alone comes 
the fulness of the life that we all need. " I am the 
vine," He repeats, " ye are the branches." The 

(75) 



76 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

word describes the relationship so characteristically 
as to need no explanation. The branch is nothing 
apart from the vine. The proof of its life and 
character is the fruit it is to bear. In this conde- 
scending grace in which God has given His Son to 
come into the world, the fruit borne by those who 
are joined to Him is to be, not straggling, or hap- 
hazard or unworthy, but the « much fruit " which 
shall be worthy both of the branch and of the 
vine that bears it. The service of the Christian is 
to be the joy of his Lord, and his own crown and 
reward. 

The question before us is, how can business men 
so take up Christian service that it shall be the 
measure of their fidelity to Christ ? 

I am not going to speak of the worth of uncon- 
scious influence. That is always important. We 
will admit at once all that may be said for it as the 
paramount influence of the Christian. If the at- 
mosphere which a man carries about with him is 
not Christian; if he does not seem filled with the 
spirit of love and honor, and truth, and gentleness 
and self-discipline-in short, with the spirit of 
Christ-his spoken words and his active service 
profit little. This was the chief characteristic of 
our Saviour. He did many wonderful works. He 
uttered words which still hold the attention of the 
world; but more than His words or His works was 
the manifest spirit that filled Him. This was what 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 77 

lifted Him above all other men, and gave meaning 
to His works and weight to His words. 

No man can be an efficient follower of the Lord 
Jesus Christ who has not caught something of His 
spirit, and whose silent and unconscious influence 
does not convince others that the life of Christ is 
indeed hid in his heart. But it is not of this that 
we are to speak to-day. 

Nor am I to speak of the moral value of a busi- 
ness man's daily work. The disciples were called 
to be fishers of men, but that meant something 
more than the testimony they were to give to 
Christ while fishing for fish. 

Six days in the week you are to do business, and 
you must do it with all your heart and strength. 
That God approves of the business of life is shown 
by the fact that most men must needs be engaged 
in it all their days, and that it stands in such im- 
portant relations to the individual happiness, no 
less than to the individual's worth in the world. 
The business man certainly has no reason to apolo- 
gize for his work, either to the Lord or to himself. 
God is served in the toil of the men who plow the 
fields, or grind the grain, or weave the fabric, or 
build the houses, or distribute the products, or 
carry on the exchange, or heal the sick, or grade 
the streets, or guide the State, or administer the 
laws, or do anything useful in the complicated work 
of daily life. The progress of the world in its long 



<6 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

path from creation to glory is so forwarded; and 
God shows us that this work is dear to Himself and 
worthy of His eternal thought, in that He has 
planned it all from the beginning, and is not 
wearied with the daily care of it, and has con- 
nected it so vitally with the sum of human happi- 
ness, which is the counterpart of His own. 

You men and women who are harnessed to the 
car of daily toil, whatever form that toil may take, 
may be at rest in the thought that you are employ- 
ed in God's great workshop, and though you may 
not be permitted to see the relation of your labor 
to the final result, it has a relation intimate and 
constant. Each man has his assigned task. The 
work in your hands, however small and insignificant 
it may be, is in the Master's eye an important part 
of the whole. You do your work and get your daily 
wage, and you may have the sweet consciousness 
that in performing that daily task you are as truly 
doing the Lord's work — if you are doing it wisely 
and well— as if you were one of the swift spirits 
who are His unseen messengers, or the perfected 
saints who serve Him night and day in His heaven- 
ly temple. 

Jesus has forever exalted all toil by the thirty 
years He spent in the carpenter's home ; those mys- 
terious years in which, engaged in manual labor, 
He hid Himself among the common people that in 
the weariness and care and dull routine of daily 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 79 

toil, He might know our life as it is the lot of the 
vast multitude of men and women, and that He 
might be known to us all as one like ourselves. 
And when the hour came for the public service, 
with its startling miracles and burning discourses ; 
when the hands were freed from their daily tasks, 
and the form stood erect with the consciousness of 
its divine message, and the face glowed with the 
light of another world, He would not escape the 
common burden, but is to be seen through those 
surcharged years of the public ministry ever solicit- 
ous for the temporal welfare of the little company 
gathered about Him. He is thoughtful of their 
daily maintenance. He provides for their needed 
rest, He secures for them a house of entertainment, 
He washes their travel-soiled feet. He never asks 
to be relieved from these humble ministries in 
order that He may devote Himself to a more 
absorbing task. He is Himself the picture of the 
ideal life of His truest servants ; finding opportu- 
nity for the largest service amid the humblest du- 
ties ; exalting the call of God in ministering to the 
needs of the lowly and the weak. Let us not be be- 
trayed into neglecting the tasks of daily life, how- 
ever wearied the frame, or however jaded the mind. 
You are as truly serving God in the counting-house 
and in the factory, in the home and in the shop, 
as you could serve Him in the pulpit or on the 
mission-field. "The earth is the Lord's and the 



80 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. ^ 

fulness thereof,"— and the work of the world, and 
the increase of its fulness may be a direct tribute 
to the praise of its Maker. 

But not of this service are we speaking to-day. 
Our theme is a call upon business men for a sj>ecifi- 
cally Christian service, as properly demanded of 
every one. This alone satisfies the meaning of the 
text. The "much fruit," which the Saviour an- 
nounced as the characteristic of His disciples, is 
evidently something for which all are to strive as a 
definite and honored privilege ; a tribute to their 
Lord and a reward and joy to themselves. 

This must be so, because this was the chief aim 
of the Saviour's own work. He came to do the 
Father's will by a certain distinct and positive 
service which should proclaim His Father, and 
bring in His reign in the earth. For this He fitted 
Himself. The duties of home, the daily tasks, the 
hours of study and of thought, the years in 
Nazareth, valuable as they were in ripeuing Eis 
own growing character, and powerful as a testimony 
to the world about Him, are to be understood only 
as so much preparation for the more definite service 
to which He was consecrated. The purpose which 
controlled His life was to give Himself with that 
activity and definite purpose to doing the Father's 
will which could only be satisfied when each day 
should show some new opportunity entered, some 
new testimony borne, some new task achieved which 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 81 

should count at once and positively upon the prog- 
ress of the kingdom. For this He was born, and 
to this He gave Himself. All else was incidental. 
If, then, we are to be His disciples nothing short 
of this will answer the requirement. 

The Christian business man, if he is to be true to 
his Master, must have a purpose not unlike the 
Master's for specific service. Indirect or casual re- 
sults will not suffice. "We can only be like Christ 
when the ruling motive of Christ occupies the same 
place in our hearts as in His, and when we find our- 
selves in unrest, unless we are able to do something 
which shall contribute definitely to the cause of 
God. We want to show that we are entirely His, 
and that we are His at all times ; that we carry His 
love in our hearts, and the thought of His cause in 
our minds always, and are ever eager for opportu- 
nity to serve Him. 

Wholly apart from the need of our work, or of 
its relation to the progress of the kingdom of God 
on the earth, is the question of our personal relation 
to Christ. Except His spirit be in us we are not 
His, and this was the characteristic of His spirit 
that He was animated with the purpose of service. 
We cannot be truly His, or in the language of the 
text, cannot " abide in Him," unless we are filled 
with the same desire to bear much fruit ; that is, 
to do those things which shall result in a direct 
benefit to the cause of God. 



82 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

But, furthermore, the account which the Saviour 
gives of the relation of His kingdom to the world 
requires of all this specific service. A war is wag- 
ing between the kingdoms of this world and the 
kingdom of Christ. In warfare all contribute. All 
do not go to the battle ; but all are to the measure 
of their ability engaged in winning the victory, and 
every citizen, however remote from the field of 
strife, or however absorbed in his daily toil, is fully 
conscious of the issues that are at stake, and eager 
to do his part to determine the result. "When a 
war involves a whole nation, and is for victory or 
death, every one does his part and does it eagerly, 
and with purpose. 

Christ is at war with the powers of this world. 
It is a war for the souls of men. It involves all 
who are born. It goes on through the centuries. 
Multitudes for whom Christ died are perishing. 
Multitudes very dear to Him are in hourly peril. 
Every Christian is summoned to service as a soldier, 
and, as a soldier, is warned to be armed and ready 
and resolute. No laggard service will answer. The 
enemy is everywhere. The line of battle now ad- 
vances, and now falls back. Brilliant victories are 
won, and bright hopes vanish. The call is always 
for better service, braver, more devoted, more in- 
tense. Only so is the final triumph to be secured. 
It would surely seem that only they who heed 
the call, and give heart and hand to the cause, 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 83 

<jan truly count themselves as enlisted with the 
Lord. 

Furthermore, the conditions of personal growth seem 
to require active Christian service. The alternative 
of the text is, as St. Augustine sharply put it, " Aid 
vitis aut ignis," either the vine or the fire. We 
must bear fruit, or be cast into the fire and be 
burnt. If we do not serve Christ, we cannot grow 
with Christ, and if we do not grow with Christ, we 
are worthless to Christ. 

This proves itself in many ways. A Christian life 
without definite Christian service is sure to be a 
iselfish life, and a selfish life becomes quickly an un- 
christian life. Moreover, the cares of the world 
increase with advancing years. Business becomes 
more absorbing, whether or not it becomes larger. 
The business man who has no definite Christian 
work, or accepts no Christian trust, finds himself 
more and more absorbed in the routine and details 
of business and of the world. His heart becomes 
iilled with these things, and religion is crowded out. 
Christian service, therefore, becomes a necessity in 
order that there may be a free Christian growth. 
Only so are we kept close to those Interests of the 
Lord's cause which by our care for them enlarge our 
understanding and soften our heart and keep fresh 
our interest in our fellows. The world of business 
is charged with self-interest. It dominates us, it 
hardens us, it sets us in antagonism with others, 



84 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

and in spite of ourselves it tends to blight and de- 
stroy all that is best in the soul. 

All business men need then all the help they can 
get to protect themselves against these influences. 

I will not soon forget an appeal that I heard be- 
fore a company of 400 business men a few months 
ago, by a business man then advanced in life and soon 
to die ; as upon the spur of the moment, in response 
to an invitation to speak, he appealed as with the 
face and tongue of a prophet to those younger 
men, for their own sake, and their families' sake, 
and for the sake of all that was best in their lives, 
that every one of them should have some definite 
Christian service to which he could give his heart 
and thought. He referred to his own experience. 
He had begun life a stranger in a strange city; and 
young man as he was, had been put in charge of a 
large force of mechanics. The alternative was 
forced upon him at once to seek his own comfort 
and interest, or devote himself to the spiritual care 
of others. He made his choice, and for upwards of 
fifty years of most active business, burdened with 
imperfect health and pressed incessantly by a mul- 
titude of commercial cares, he had never ceased to 
have in hand some definite Christian work — a church 
for his men, or a mission Sunday-school, or a great 
Bible-class, or a ministry among the poor, to which 
he not only devoted a part of the Sabbath, but 
which was on his mind and heart during the week.. 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 85 

And now, at the close of life, honored by all, with 
great institutions grown up as the result of his 
labors, to live long after he is gone, with multi- 
tudes who loved his face and honored his name, he 
pleaded with those younger men, for the sake of 
Christ, themselves, and their families to follow his 
example. It ought not to be a strange tale to any 
of you, for New York has never been without 
similar testimony, and the most honored names in 
this city in the past have been those who have lived 
just such lives. 

And now, I beg you to observe that the ordinary 
excuses that business men offer are not valid. 
Many say they are too busy for more than they are 
doing. In one sense that is doubtless true; but 
whether a man is too busy or not depends upon 
his strength, and his strength depends in no small 
degree upon his spiritual life. If you business men 
could only understand how much better you are 
prepared for the work of the week by a Sabbath 
which has been somewhat engrossing, compelling 
the mind to turn aside from business thoughts by 
the eagerness of its new interest on that day, more 
of you would be engaged in specific Christian 
service. The business man who idles away the 
Sabbath because he needs rest finds himself on 
Monday morning in a very different condition from 
what be would have been had he come to the Sab- 
bath anticipating a new draft upon his heart and 



CO BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

eager to receive the refreshment that is found in 
the devotion of the mind to a new and satisfying 
toH. 

There is often no condition so perilous to the 
over-tired mind as an effort for idle vacuity. The 
wheels of the brain will not stop running. The 
thoughts of the week will not down at one's bid- 
ding. With hands idle and body resting the jaded 
mind is defeated by its own weakness. It wears 
itself out with the recurring questions of the week 
which in the idleness of Sunday it has not the op- 
portunity of settling. A man who is working in 
his office to the full measure of his power during 
the week, more than any other, needs the refresh- 
ment of an entire change when he turns away from 
it, and for most men this change can only be se- 
cured by a change of occupation as exacting as 
some consecrated Christian service. If Christian 
men took this view of the case, the work of our 
philanthropies, and especially of our churches, 
would not be done so carelessly, and with so little 
thought, as in so many instances it is now. 

Some say they have no gift for Christian service; 
and some, no opportunity; and some think them- 
selves not fitted; and some say that no one can do 
everything, and that we hire the minister for that 
work. To one and all the answer of the Saviour 
comes, " I am the vine, ye are the branches." Every 
one has his gift. Every one may have his oppor- 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 87 

tunity and fitness. Every one may bear fruit that 
shall be " much," as related to the total, and to his 
opportunities, if he will. 

Now, the Lord calls us all to set aside these ex- 
cuses, and to be willing to do what we can, and to 
do it with purpose and force. Because such ser- 
vice is the bond of union with Himself, because it 
is what is meant by membership in His kingdom, 
because it is the condition of personal growth, and 
finally because it is the only means by which 
the church of God is to fulfill its task in the 
world. 

The glory of the cause of Christ is that in all 
the centuries it has found multitudes of men who, 
while engaged in their daily avocations, have yet 
found abundant opportunity for Christian service. 
The pattern was set by the apostles themselves, 
who could be fishermen or tentmakers and still 
perform their divinely appointed tasks. In no 
century has it received more splendid service from 
business men than in that which is now closing. 
The Christian business man of the 19th century is 
almost a new type in civilization, and he cer- 
tainly has achieved a new glory for the church of 
Christ. 

What a long row of brilliant names our churches 
now possess, of men, who through long business 
lives, with hands filled with the world's work, have 
yet found heart and time for doing the Lord's 



88 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 



work in a large and careful way; men who have 
given themselves to the founding and guiding of 
great Christian institutions, whose names are built 
into the life of our strongest and noblest churches, 
and who are living anew in the men and women 
whom they have personaUy led to Christ. 

Facing the door of this church is the statue of 
such an one, who through many years of uninter- 
rupted business life was known in this community 
as a man whose heart and mind were always filled 
with care for the religious interests of the com- 
munity about him, and all the individuals whom he 
could personally reach. I may, indeed, speak of 
him with a deep sense of personal gratitude, for 
when Mr. William E. Dodge was a young busi- 
ness man, working to the fuU measure of his 
power, he found time not only to conduct a large 
Bible-class every Sabbath, but personally to labor 
with the members of that class until he led them 
one by one to Christ. It was the result of such 
personal visitation, time for which was snatched 
on his way to and from his business, that led my 
own mother to Christ, and, so I may say, deter- 
mined my Christian life, We may well thank God 
for the abundant labors of the overworked business 
men in this city. There is no city in the land in 
which so much or such painstaking Christian labor 
is accomplished both by men and women. There 
is none in which the standard of Christian service 



BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 89 

is higher, or in which the pattern of the Christian 
business man's life is purer. We only need to 
exalt that pattern for all and to encourage all to 
recognize that the Lord has placed no man in a 
position in which he may not do his best service, 
and win his worthy reward. It is simply a ques- 
tion of willingness and of purpose. We all need 
to recognize our daily privileges, and to shape our 
life with reference to them. 

This church, with its splendid history, its noble 
men, and its boundless opportunities, may indeed 
do anything for the cause of Christ, and for the 
city of New York, if you business men but realize 
your opportunities. As you plan to give thought 
to the Lord's cause as a specific duty; as you are 
not content until you have found some place of 
definite personal service, something to which you 
•can give your heart and your best thought — not 
something which can be done in idle hours, or when 
something else does not call you, — so the church 
prospers and so the Lord sends blessing. When 
"the work of the church is done as business is done 
—with time and care, with wise planning, and 
large-minded intelligence and vigorous grasp, — then 
the religion of Christ is respected in the com- 
munity, and the kingdom of Christ goes forward. 
Then Christ abides in His church, for His people 
are striving to abide in Him. They are making 
His cause and His service uppermost in their hearts. 



90 BUSINESS AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 

Then the " Joy of the Lord is your strength," and 
bearing much fruit, as the Saviour has promised, 
you are His disciples indeed. I give thanks to God 
daily that so many of you business men, old and 
young, are doing this. 



THE DEMAND FOE PROGRESS 



" Reaching forth unto those things which are be- 
fore, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus."— Phil. iii. 13-14 



(92) 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 

nnHEEE is something in every heart that responds 
-*- eagerly to the summons of this text. We feel 
the uplift of an appeal for progress. Coupled 
with the sense of dependence, which the philoso- 
phers tell us, is fundamental in man's thinking, is 
the desire of attainment. Ovu* minds are so con- 
stituted as to strain always for a wider horizon, 
for new and larger possibilities. "With the vanish- 
ing of this desire hope dies, and with the death of 
hope life ceases to be life. It becomes mere exist- 
ence; and man, made in the image of God, sinks 
back into the life of the animal. 

These two facts, the sense of dependence and the 
longing for progress, must be set side by side as 
the starting-points of all thought, and as the ulti- 
mate source of all our action. Here is to be found 
the explanation of the pleasure we have in the life 
of the young. 

A service like that of Children's Day starts our 
blood and sets our nerves to tingling. We delight 
to gather the children about us. We respond to 
their excitement. The springs of our life seem 
filled again as we look into their young faces and 
hear their bright voices. The explanation lies not 

(93) 



94 THE DEMAND FOK PROGRESS. 

in the surface facts. It is not in the pleasure of 
their eager joys and fresh enthusiasm. It is in the 
depths of our own hearts, as the longing of our 
souls is stimulated, and the desire of progress and 
attainment, growing dull with the advancing years, 
is kindled anew. The thought of the possibilities 
of their- young lives gives filip to our old hearts, 
and stirs into quickened action our jaded pulses. 
We, too, are young again. We have not reached 
our goal. We have not done all that we yet may 
do. The horizon still lifts for us. There is some- 
thing to which we yet may attain. We are glad of 
the children, for they make us glad for ourselves. 
After all, the years between us and them are short, 
and life is long. We have not grown too old to 
live. We are not out of the race. We have not 
ceased to be human, sons, indeed, of God. 

Starting with this fact I am sure of your interest 
when I ask you to consider what, then, is this prog- 
ress for which we all long? What form must it 
take that it may satisfy us ? Certainly it does not 
lie in progress in material things. Increase in 
wealth, in luxury, in refinement; in the arts of life 
and in dominion over nature, whether it be an in- 
crease of things in our own hands or an increase 
in the world about us, is no measure of true 
progress. 

We can manipulate matter after a fashion of 
which our fathers did not dream. The progress of 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 95 

the century, of which all are so proud, is mainly in 
the way in which the forces of earth and air and 
sea present themselves like so many well -trained 
horses — obedient to man's hand — for all the service 
of daily life. We have made great advances in our 
skill in handling these forces, and consequently in 
the amount of service which they are every day 
rendering. 

Our factories are full of machines of precision, 
•each doing the work of many hands, producing 
the manufactured article at a fraction of its former 
cost, and giving employment to an army of laborers 
who are better paid and better fed than their pred- 
ecessors were, and who receive a far larger share 
of the products of their labor. The telegraph, the 
electric light, the swift steamships, the railway, are 
but so many forms of the stretching forth of man's 
hand in masterful control over the forces of the 
eaith. Everywhere science has become the cheer- 
ful handmaid of labor. Iron is now converted into 
steel without "puddling." Coal is resolved into 
gas for economic combustion. Electricity is weighed 
and measured for delivery as if it were cord-wood. 
The man of science to-day feels himself in duty 
bound to go from his laboratory to the factory and 
market with each new discovery he makes, in order 
that life may be in some way enriched and amelio- 
rated by it. 

But all this lies quite outside of ourselves. The 



96 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 

man who yesterday lived in a hovel may to-day live 
in a mansion. His candle has given place to an 
incandescent light; his tableware has changed to 
hammered silver; his crockery to Koyal Worcester. 
His chromos are replaced by paintings from Paris. 
His brown-stone and his bronze may be the wonder 
of all passers. What measure is there in these 
things of true progress in the man himself ? We 
are compelled to ask, is he by so much the more 
honest and truthful? Has he more faith or love? 
Is he humble? Is he pure in heart? Has he 
grown more unselfish ? Are his sympathies larger 
and tenderer ? Is his grasp upon God more real ? 
Is he more of a man than before ? Of this we have 
no suggestion. Yet surely these are what men are 
to live for. These shall endure when all the rest 
shall vanish. Indeed, what we are tempted to call 
our progress may be simply a record of a debt 
toward which we have paid little or nothing. 
What part had we in the costly devotion to truth 
and to God which brought our forefathers to these 
shores, and laid the foundations on which are built 
so much of what we are proudest? What part had 
we in the mighty throes in which our national in- 
stitutions were begotten, or what sacrifice does it 
cost us to maintain them? 

We are proud of the civilization of our age. 
How does it come to be ours, except as an inherit- 
ance to which we were born, and concerning which 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRES*S. 97 

we shall do well if we pass it on to our children un- 
marred. We pay, we say, for what we enjoy, for 
the house we live in, the clothes we wear, the food 
we eat, the hooks we read, the transportation we 
get on the cars, but what does our payment repre- 
sent of the cost in productive thought and self- 
sacrifice and painful labor which each article that 
adds to our comfort represents ? 

What have we that we have not received, to the 
extent that it brings to us the result of a vast out- 
lay to which we have contributed nothing? Prog- 
ress there is, it is true, on all sides; how little of it 
we have any right to claim, as due to what we have 
done, and how much of it is limited to things in 
which we are in no sense a part. Progress in ma- 
terial things is well-nigh universal; but progress in 
moral attainment is most rare. 

The " reaching forth to those things which are be- 
fore," the "pressing toward the mark for the prize," 
which the apostle had in mind, in the text, which 
answers to the fundamental thought of progress in 
every heart, must be personal. It must be in our- 
selves rather than in our surroundings. 

You see in the park a beautiful team. The 
horses' coats shine like silk. Their form is perfect; 
their metal is high, their speed like the wind. In 
blood and training they are the finest product 
of years of care. Suppose the man who owns 
them, whose every wish they obey, is less honest 



98 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 

than his horses. Suppose that as you look at them, 
man aud beast, you feel that should the angel of 
the Lord stand in the way, as with Balaam, the 
beast is better fitted to discern him than his owner. 
What progress is there here to be proud of ? 

A beautiful yacht fixes the attention of all, as 
gathering the forces of the air in her wide spread- 
ing canvas she makes them do her bidding, or 
close-hauled she lays her course into the very eye 
of the wind. Suppose the men who sail her mind 
the helm that should govern their lives less surely 
than their boat does, and evince an all too fatal 
tendency to fall off before every strong wind of 
temptation. 

Suppose a city is crowned with beauty and pros- 
perity. Great buildings are there ; models of 
strength and appropriateness. See how carefully 
their foundations are carried down to the rock. 
What if their owners are laying the foundations of 
their souls on the sand, and building themselves 
with wood, hay, and stubble ? Here are splendid 
residences; what if the occupants are less admirable 
than their homes ? What if rancor and strife and 
selfishness and vanity and impurity should be found 
dwelling amid the luxury and outward refinement ? 
Here are successful stores, and busy, well-organized 
factories ; what if the merchant is dishonest, or the 
manufacturer, in his eager selfishness, is indifferent 
to the welfare of the human beings in his employ, 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. \)V 

•or careless of the moral character of the community 
in which he lives ? Would we have much of which 
to boast ? 

There comes to every man a day when these 
things by which we measure ourselves turn to noth- 
ingness. "VVe find ourselves suddenly shaken free 
from them all. We are called to bid farewell to 
this world, and the eyes strain after glimpses of the 
life beyond. The merchant in that hour will scarce- 
ly give thought enough to his business to direct the 
disposition of it. The manufacturer cares nothing 
for his mill, though perhaps up to that day or week 
he has lived in and for it. Stranger still, the man 
ctf science, who perhaps has won fame in his studies, 
cares no more for them. The whole realm of 
thought in which he has lived vanishes from him. 
He asks no more for his books, and is indifferent 
to new discoveries. Even the father loses solicitude 
for his family, and the husband for his wife. The 
bour has come in which each must give an account, 
not of his goods, or of his learning, or of his house- 
hold, but of himself. He must go out alone, sepa- 
rated from the dross of this life by a dissolution to 
which no electrolysis can compare. The question 
then is, has there been progress here ? Have I been 
pressing forward, or have I only been improving 
the things which I must leave, which were not my- 
self? Have I made some measure of attainment 
in the line which alone shall satisfy ? Is the prize 



100 THE DEMAND FOK PROGRESS. 

of my high calling of God within my reach ? Or 
have I been laboring upon the slag of the furnace 
from which the glowing metal is now to be forever 
poured off ? 

But, furthermore, it is manifest that this personal 
progress must be in a particular direction. We are 
to " press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus." Progress, to be 
true, must bring us into a growing likeness to the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

Every man has a calling, or is supposed to have. 
One is a teacher, another a physician, another a 
lawyer. One sells dry-goods, another groceries, 
another boots and shoes. One is a machinist, 
another a builder, another a banker. The first 
business of life is to learn to employ one's self. 
We but flounder until we have settled upon what 
we shall do, and are busy doing it. 

Men are in the main known by their occupations. 
The work makes and marks the man. The differ- 
ence, for example, between a doctor and a butcher, 
or a judge and a broker, is not in the costume ! It 
embraces the entire man, and even controls his 
thoughts. Men are expected to follow their calling 
and to be moulded by it. 

Now, we have, each of us, another calling aside 
from that of our mere occupation, a calling just as 
real, and far more authoritative. It is this in which 
Paul declared himself as pressing forward, and to- 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 101 

which he summons us, " The high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus." "We are called to make a business 
of becoming like Jesus Christ. We are not born so. 
We do not by nature grow so. We shall not wake 
up some fine morning and find ourselves become so. 
It is not a call that clamors after us in the voices of 
the street. Hunger and thirst, and nakedness, and 
the need of a home to dwell in, and the favor of 
our fellow-men are not its ministers We shall suf- 
fer no immediate want or obloquy if we do not re- 
gard it. Hard times may not divert us from it, 
and returning prosperity will not re-establish us in 
it. No one stands ready to reproach us with idle- 
ness or shame in regard to it. But it is a call none 
the less. Shame overwhelming, and want a thou- 
sandfold greater than of food or raiment, awaits 
the man who neglects it. A call to become like 
Jesus Christ ! 

How can I pursue this calling if I do not know 
what likeness to Christ is ? Does it mean to be rich 
and refined ; to be well-dressed and to have an ex- 
quisite taste ? Is it to have a large knowledge of 
the world and of men, or to be shrewd at a bargain, 
and wise in investments ? Is it to be well-read in 
books, or successful in one's profession, or, as a 
young man, to be a great ball-player, or an oars- 
man, or a bicyclist, or a regimental officer ; or is it 
to add something to whatever we may be in these 
directions ; something over and above and quite 



102 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 

apart from them ? Is it to be the friend of God ? 
To have the experience of forgiven sins, to be a 
striver after righteousness, seeking those things 
■which are above, " where Christ sitteth at the right 
hand of God " ? " Setting the affections on things 
above, not on things on the earth " ? Resisting the 
devil and his works, and earnestly contending to 
become pure in heart, gentle, patient, honest, good, 
a lover of one's fellow-men ? This is our calling of 
God. How can we enter it except we know that 
we have such a call, and feel the shame of offering 
any other as a substitute ? Here is progress, for it 
is the growth of our very self ; growth in what shall 
endure when all else shall vanish. 

As we turn again to the text we find that it is 
charged with energy. It is couched in phrases of 
contest. " Reaching forth unto those things which 
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of 
the high calling of God." This progress which 
shall satisfy can be attained only by effort. Energy 
is demanded. Persistency and patience are indis- 
pensable. Therefore, it is the voice of God appeal- 
ing to all that is best in each of us. 

In a measure this is true of all callings. You 
business men are fond of saying that business is 
not done as it was thirty years ago. You no longer 
write your letters and go home content to wait in 
peace until the slow answer comes from the ends of 
the earth. You buy and sell by telegraph, and the 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 103 

merciless telephone pursues you to your bed-cham- 
ber. Your whole strength has to be concentrated 
upon rapid and incessant action. Go to the factory; 
the workmen are everywhere sitting at machines 
where a moment's inattention will ruin the product. 
You say, nowadays, that only he is successful who 
puts his soul into his work and does it with all his 
might ; and you turn back from your high calling 
of God because it requires attention and purpose, 
and possibly self-sacrifice and self-denial ! " I write 
unto you, young men, because ye are strong," said the 
aged apostle. You are successful in business or in 
study, will you not meet the conditions of this ser- 
vice ? Will you not strive to succeed here ? Many 
of you have begun the Christian life. Your face shone 
with purpose ; your voice was heard in the prayer- 
meeting. You had taken yourself in hand and were 
willing to do hard things for God, if only you might 
know Christ and grow in grace. 

Or if not already a Christian you were eager to 
be. It was in your mind day and night. You knew 
you had a calling of God and were seeking to know 
how you might press forward and attain its prize. 
And you have grown cold. You are making prog- 
ress in your business or in your profession your ex- 
cuse. You have not time for religion. You hope 
that by and by it will turn out all right. Just read 
this chapter before us and see what hope there is 
that things will turn out to suit us, if we do not 



104 THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 

turn them. " I count all things but loss for the ex- 
cellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, 
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and 
do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. 
That I may know Him and the power of His resur- 
rection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being 
made conformable unto His death; if by any means 
I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not 
as though I had already attained, either were already 
perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend 
that for which also I am apprehended of Christ 
Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have appre- 
hended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those 
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto 
those things which are before, I press toward the 
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus." What loving earnestness in His 
appjeal. "Brethren, be followers together of me." 
" So run that ye may obtain." 

How little we grasp the meaning of this appeal 
of God to us. " Oh, I am not yet apprehended, I 
suppose," said a gentleman to me the other day, as 
we were talking of personal religion. He had evi- 
dently found in this appeal the manifest suggestion 
of a higher plane of life than that upon which he 
was living, and to justify himself to his own heart 
for not being what God would have him to be, was 
growing accustomed to think of himself as not yet 
called of God, not yet really grasped by the Divine 



THE DEMAND FOR PROGRESS. 105 

love. The Saviour had not laid down His life for 
him. Think of it. ■ 

" If that I may apprehend that for which also I am 
apprehended" was the apostle's glad testimony. 
Every one of us is loved after the same fashion. 
Every one of us has the same high calling, Every 
one of us has the possibility of this progress of 
the soul. Every one of us is to be a true man in 
Christ Jesus, not if God wills, for God does will 
it for us all, but if we will, as He summons us all 
to shake off our lethargy, to arouse our will to 
do what He would have us to do, to be what He 
has made it possible for each of us to become. 

And what, then, is the reward? How full these 
words are of it. It is "the excellency of the 
knowledge of God." It is the " righteousness 
which is of God by faith." It is the " power of His 
resurrection," attained by us. It is at last to be 
made perfect, as " He is perfect." It is to appre- 
hend as we are " apprehended of Christ Jesus." It 
is to win the " prize of the high calling of God." 
It is to attain the goal for which every soul in its 
God-implanted longings for progress will surely cry. 

No wonder that in our Lord's account of the last 
day the redeemed are astonished by their recep- 
tion, and ask in amazement what they have done to 
deserve so much. " Lord, when saw we Thee an- 
lungered and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee 
drink? When saw we Thee a stranger and took 



106 



THE DEMAND FOK PKOGKESS. 



Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee ? or when saw 
we Thee sick or in prison and came unto Thee ? " 
Then comes the wonderful answer, « Whenever you 
did one least thing in conscious self-denial, when- 
ever you put forth the least effort of good, when- 
ever you heard the voice of your high calling of 
God, and obeyed, whenever you reached after 
the things which are eternal, whenever you pressed 
toward the mark for the prize which is in Jesus 
Christ, ye did it unto me ; enter into your reward. 

Is it not, then, worth the while, beloved, to be 
true men ? If a little effort will bring such a bless- 
ing, what will not a lifelong purpose obtain ? To 
win Christ and to be found in Him; not having our 
own righteousness, but the righteousness which is 
through faith in Jesus Christ. To have that true 
consciousness of the forgiveness of sins, of the 
possession of a new heart, of a grasp upon the 
eternal truth, of the power to overcome temptation; 
to have trust and calmness and strength. To be 
men and women growing daily in the things of God, 
and in victory over the world and the flesh, walk- 
ing through life with your hand firmly held in the 
hand of the Saviour. This is the prize that God 
has set within the reach of all of you. What an 
infinite loss if any man come short of it! 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 



"And every man went unto his own house. 
John vii. 53. 



(108) 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 

T7"OU will find in the folio of almost any artist 
■*- some highly treasured sketches by the great 
masters. They are often little more than a few 
strokes : a hint of a head, or a figure, or a group, 
even a hand, or a limb, fixing the conception that 
was passing through the brain of the artist, but 
revealing to him who can interpret, both the mas- 
ter's thought and the master's method. In the 
rough pen sketch of two reclining figures, for ex- 
ample, you can see Michael Angelo's masterpiece, 
the tomb of the Medici, as it first sprung into his 
mind; as in those fragmentary crayoned groups 
you catch the forms that were to reappear in 
Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican. There is the fin- 
ished work, here is the original sketch which de- 
dermined its development, and in which its motif, 
its governing idea, and the relation to it of the 
several parts, are most clearly to be read. 

The New Testament is a folio of such sketches 
of the Christian Church. They are from the hand 
of the Master himself, and of disciples under His 
immediate instruction. The Christian turns to 
them with an ever new pleasure, and is sure always 
to hit upon some new truth. It is only a line, a 

(109) 



110 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 

passing incident, a thought caught and fixed for 
future reference, but it is discovered to be the 
germ of some great truth by and by to be un- 
folded, or the disclosure of some principle which 
is to underlie and govern the growth of the Chris- 
tian community or the Christian character. Often 
it is a mere hint, but it throws open a window 
through which we can look upon God's wide ways 
of dealing with men, and gain for our varied need 
sweet consolation or refreshing strength. 

Such a window is this brief text. It occurs in 
the midst of much weighty matter. The Saviour 
is discoursing of the great things of His person 
and work. The days are hastening to the end of 
His ministry and to the crucifixion. The discourses 
as recorded b}' John are long and move upon the 
highest plane. They deal with the Father from 
whom He has come, with the truth which He is, 
and with the souls of men, made for everlasting 
life, going down to eternal death. Suddenly, among 
other passing incidents treasured in the narrative, 
we come upon this. As the chapter closes* we read 
" And every man went unto his own house." 

At once we see ourselves doing the same thing. 
Men have been doing it from that day to this. 
From all kinds of meetings, and all kinds of expe- 
riences, with hearts heavy or light, with thoughts 
wise or foolish, with hopes and fears, with anxieties 
and cares, with joys and sorrows, we turn every 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. Ill 

man to his own house, there to put ourselves under 
conditions of life new and different. 

It cannot but be that this experience so universal, 
so constantly recurring, is of God's planning, and 
plays a large part in our character and life. 

Life in one's own house ! It embraces more than 
half our hours, much more, if we reckon childhood 
and age. It will not be strange if we find it very 
full of meaning. Let us approach it, as we all in 
fact do every day, from without. See what going 
to his own house means to every man ; first of all, 
in what he puts behind him. 

He leaves his place of business. He leaves all 
•conventions and club3, places where men gather 
for enjoyment or stimulus. He leaves all commit- 
tees, or little groups in which men combine for 
multiplied activity. These three, the place of busi- 
ness, the convention or club, and the committee or 
board, represent the three great departments of 
active life. In the ome we bend our energies to 
getting on in the world, measuring ourselves with 
other men and seeking to master for our own ben- 
efit the great forces which determine success in 
life. In the second we obey the instinct which 
leads men to find pleasure and something of profit- 
able excitement in assemblies of their kind, an in- 
stinct which expresses itself as truly in the loafing 
group of boys on the corner, or in the discussive 
chat around the stove in the village grocery, as in. 



112 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 

the great political or religious convention. In the 
third we plan and jDlot to accomplish with the aid 
of others what we cannot hope to accomplish alone. 
These, the business, the convention, and the com- 
mittee, make up our active life. They absorb, 
whether or not they satisf}' us They give us our 
chance. They are our opportunity and our tools. 
In them and with them we show what we cau do, if 
indeed they do not make us the men we are. 

A great deal is waiting to be said about this side 
of life. It represents the present joy of living, the 
joy of strong men summoned to put forth their 
strengtb, to think, to plan, to persist, to struggle, 
to overcome, to progress, in God's great plan of 
peopling the earth and subduing it, preparing the 
way for the oncoming of His final kingdom and 
the full revelation of Himself. It is a life worth 
living. Away the thought that measures happiness 
by exemption from necessity of labor, or depre- 
cates the daily tasks that each morning summon 
the army of workers to lay strong hands to the 
wheels of daily life ! But the single jx>int before us 
is that as we turn our faces to our homes we leave 
all this behind That simple act, then, of going 
each to his own house, must be full of meaning. 
You mount the steps, you unlatch the door. As 
you close it behind you, you shut the world out, and 
shut yourself in to a different scene. 

Let us then in the second place see what that is. 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 113 

It is the world of the home ; that little world so 
small in its area, so large in its meaning. It is the 
place of those unending personal duties and those 
incessant personal services which go to make up so 
large a part of the life of those we most love, and 
therefore so large a part of our own life. It is the 
place of the tenderest affections ; and the place 
where those affections are put to their true and 
constant test. There anxiety and care are never 
distant, and there sorrow touches depths and attains 
a dignity elsewhere unknown. There are the joys 
beside which all others are poor, and there are the 
burdens in comparison with which all others are 
light, and the problems and tasks to which all oth- 
ers are easy. Your hand is stretched out in proud 
mastery in your business; it falls powerless, and 
your head droops as you turn homeward and face 
the governing of your wayward son. You are brave 
before loss in your business; an arrow is in your 
heart as you open the door upon a sick wife or a 
suffering child. There is no escaping it. As we 
turn every man to his own house, we all recognize 
that we enter upon conditions entirely different 
from those that surround us elsewhere. 

Even the man without a family, whose house is a 
single room, recognizes it. He closes his door 
upon himself. The world is outside. He must 
now deal with realities. He sits down to look into 
his own heart. He unclothes not his body only, 



Ill THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 

but his soul. His thoughts, his purposes, his mo- 
tives, all that he has done, come up for review. He 
faces facts. There is no place for disguise. He 
seems to be doing little. They are idle moments 
in his room compared with the strenuous hours of 
the busy day, but morning by morning as he goes 
forth to his work he is made or unmade by what 
has transpired within those four walls. 

We are now prepared to see as a third consider- 
ation how large a place this daily retirement to 
his home occupies in God's plan for every man's 
life. 

We often wonder that in our physical life sleep 
fills so large a place ; we see no necessity for it. 
We often try to do without it. But it reasserts it- 
self, a strange, stubborn fact. Seven, eight hours 
of every twenty-four we must devote to a use the 
purpose of which is not clear, but which, neverthe- 
less, in some mysterious way is wrought into the 
deepest necessities of our physical nature. 

In a far higher sense the same is true of the time 
we must give to the home. We do not always real- 
lize it. We magnify the claims of what we call our 
" business." We plume ourselves upon our devo- 
tion to business at the expense of our home. We 
think time taken from the home no robbery, but 
gain. We lay aside sense of responsibility, we un- 
gird ourselves when we are at home ; however 
watchful, however jealous we may be of ever}' hour 



THE HOME AOT) THE BUSINESS. 115 

at the office or the store. We think little of the 
joys of home ; at best they are but pleasures. "We 
shirk the duties of home. There is no money in 
them. They have small relation to the greater af- 
fairs of our business. We even grow impatient of 
home. At least some men do. They frequent the 
club ; they return to the office ; they must needs 
go and " meet a man," anything to get out of the 
house and escape the irksome life which seems to 
them so petty in comparison with their larger and 
more important cares. 

But all this is foolish. God has set the solitary 
in families, and God's plans reach far. The family 
is something more than a social necessity. The 
home of a man is something more than the nest of 
a bird or the lair of the animal. God has made it 
a chief instrument in the fashioning of character. 
Its hours are sacred, its joys are pure, its duties are 
dominant, because in the plan of God they fill so 
large a place in making us, often in spite of our- 
selves, the men God would have us to be. The day 
comes when we are grateful for the innocent sleep 
*' that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, sore la- 
bor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's sec- 
ond course, chief nourisher inlife'sfeast," — though in 
our young and foolish days we so despised it. After 
the same fashion, perhaps when home has ceased 
to be, when other feet cross the familiar threshold, 
and once loved voices are forever silent, we awake 



116 THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 

to see what we have lost, we have thwarted God and 
impoverished ourself 

This brings us to the closing thought, namely, 
that if we are wise, we will accept God's plan and 
try to make the hours in our own house play a large 
part in our preparation for both Christian growth 
and Christian service. 

These hours hold us to the truth, that no mat- 
ter how large our business or how many are 
affected by it, no matter how the world may 
measure us, we each stand alone before God. We 
each have our own soul ; our own character to 
make ; our own spiritual growth to secure ; our 
own temptations to resist ; our own account to 
render. Home keeps this before us. The old 
maxim, " No man is a hero to Lis valet," is the 
familiar announcement of it Your wife, your 
children, your servants, know what you are. They 
are a kind of outside conscience to help you to be a 
better man. Eun away from them, try to escape 
their testimony and their scrutiny, and by just so 
much you are the weaker and the worse. Live in 
your home and be not of it, hold it aloof, tyrannize 
over it, make it a mere place of physical conven- 
ience or bodily comfort, you degrade it and harden 
and debase yourself. 

On the other hand, you who as Christian men long 
have enjoyed the blessing of a true home, what has it 
not been to you in all that goes to make up character ? 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 117 



He within 



Took measure of his soul and knew its strength, 
And by that silent knowledge day by day 
Was calmed, ennobled, comforted, sustained." 

There is the high ideal ; there is the large attain- 
ment of the man who has gratefully accepted the 
God-given opportunity, and in the hallowed retire- 
ment and sweet joys of a cherished home has grown 
into the stature of a strong and noble manhood. 

But with the emphasis it lays upon personal 
growth and personal duty, the home also enforces 
a wise restriction of individual responsibility. The 
outer world calls us constantly to more or less pub- 
lic duties. "Wrongs are to be righted, evils are to 
be reformed, the Church and the State are to be 
served. All this is well. It is a small life and a 
narrow one that does not take in the needs of oth- 
ers and feel some kindling response to the wants of 
the world. Still, we need to be reminded that the 
responsibility of men, the highest of men, is re- 
stricted within comparatively narrow limits 

Following Christ one's self is a duty always more 
pressing than that of trying to make others follow. 
It is vastly easier to fall off into a fussy, bustling, 
outside, reformatory kind of Christian service, than 
it is to keep one's self in hand and correct evils nearer 
home. Therefore this turning every man to his 
own house, which comes to us with such recurrent 
daily routine, is God's way of bringing us back to 



118 THE HOME A2fD THE BrSESTESS. 

ourselves, and, while releasing us in a measure from 
the pressure of the world, setting "before us the 
smaller duties in which we can none the less really 
and far more surely serve the Lord. The man who 
may not lead the church, may lead his household in 
spiritual life. He who strives in vain to reform the 
State may be more successful with bis own family ; 
at least he has a task there which will keep bim 
close to God. While the woman who is disheart- 
ened because of the slow advancement of the Tem- 
perance cause in the strifes and snares of politics, or 
mourns over the sluggish interest of her sex in the 
cause of woman's suffrage, is cheered and rehabil- 
itated when turning to her home she finds her care 
and love the inspiration and the guide of its best 
efforts, herself the object of its best affections, the 
true centre of its life. 

We want large blessings upon our church. We 
long to see the town revived and reformed. We 
want souls saved, and the horrid forces of death 
and hell swallowing so many young lives in our 
streets arrested. We want more time and strength 
for the Lord's work. The Sabbath is all too short, 
the week too crowded. We are hurried along, like 
men bound to the wheel of life with no time fcr 
anything, neither for the Lord's work nor our own 
growth. We look to the right hand and to the left 
for help. We would like to go to a convention. 
We wish some great meetings, some public services. 



THE HOME AND THE BUSINESS. 119 

might take us up and for a time lift us out of the 
pressure of daily affairs. 

While we talk, the hour comes for going every 
man to his own house. 

Ah, here it is, dear friends, the God-given sum- 
mons to each one to face the real duty, to ask your- 
self searching questions, to find out what kind of a 
man you are, what you are doing, how you are 
living, and whither you are going. Well for you if 
you can say with Joshua, " As for me and my house 
we will serve the Lord " Well for you if going to 
your home means a heart at peace and strength re- 
newed by closer fellowship with God. 



THE SURE PROMISE. 



"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you." — Matthew vi. 33. 



(122) 



THE SURE PROMISE. 

rpmS is a peremptory text. It commands us to 
^ do this thing first because there is a special 
promise in store for those who obey. Just now a 
great many things are pressing upon us all in life, 
demanding our earnest attention. Times are hard; 
many are out of work. Many who have work are 
uncertain as to what will be the condition of things 
to-morrow. Many who are in charge of large busi- 
nesses are anxious as to what a day will bring forth, 
and if ever a man found justification in listening 
to the voices of the street and the demands of 
business and secular affairs it is now. And yet 
over against them all sounds the text, as it has been 
sounding through all these centuries, "Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 5 
and these things that demand our attention in daily 
life, will take care of themselves," as we would put 
it. All these will be provided for. 

But what does this mean ? Is it given to us as a 
maxim of business? Are we to find here a specific 
prescription which, if we follow, shall cause us to 
prosper? There are so many exceptions to this. 
We recognize no visible connection between great 
riches and great piety. Is it not a low view of the 

(123) 



12-i THE SURE PROMISE. 

Bible that would set it thus alongside of "Poor 
Richard's Almanac"? Who can believe that the 
Bible was given us for this purpose? This text 
must mean something more than that " Honesty is 
the best policy." 

Surely there is a larger truth ; and it is to this 
larger truth that God bids us give heed. It is the 
voice of that deeper principle that is sounding for 
us to-day. The world is God's world. He made 
it, and He rules it, in all its various parts and in its 
totality. It is God's world, and it never for a 
moment escapes out of His control or eludes His 
knowledge. His title to it is never for one instant 
imperilled. The fact is we do not always believe 
this. "We fall into thinking that to-day it is the 
devil's world ; it was God's world once, but 
in some way the devil has gained possession 
of it, and by and by, in some distant future, 
God will take possession of it again. But 
now God is far off, interested in His own plans, 
busy with His own thoughts, waiting patiently for 
some fulness of time when He will begin to con- 
cern Himself with this world and its interests. 

Instinctively we begin to divide people into two 
classes : those whom God loves and those whom 
He hates. However this habit originated it con- 
tinues, and the gulf between these two classes 
deepens year by year — those whom God loves and 
those whom He hates. Along this line of thought, 



THE SUKE PROMISE. 125 

more or less distinct to our minds, it is impossible 
to interpret the text. It has no interpretation. It 
means nothing. When the kingdom of this world 
and the kingdom of God are regarded in any such 
sense, how is it possible to interpret success in 
one by success in the other ? There is no common 
measure which will apply to them both. But we 
know that this line of thought is untrue, and in our 
better moments we realize that the world is God's 
world in all its endless variety of interests. The 
power of steam and the power of electricity are 
just as truly the powers of God as is the power of 
the heart's best affections. The laws of business 
and the laws of nature are just as truly laws of 
God as are the laws laid down in His Holy Word. 
God is in one just as truly as in the other. All 
life originates in God; all power is given to Him 
in Heaven and in earth. 

You remember how Elijah, burdened with the 
anxious fears of life, as men are to-day, withdrew 
into the wilderness and wished he were dead, 
and God desired to teach him a fundamental truth. 
Elijah said, "I, only I, am left of all the Lord's 
people." And God told him to go forth and stand 
upon the mountain-top. "And, behold, the Lord 
passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the 
mountains." What did Elijah say? "The wind 
obeys God. He controls the storm that it did not 
harm me." Then followed the earthquake. Trem- 



126 THE SURE PROMISE. 

bling he beheld the earth shake and vast fissures 
open on either side. But he only said, " The earth 
is the Lord's. All its mighty forces are under His 
control." Then followed the fire; and the awe- 
struck prophet said, " The fire is God's messenger; 
this and all other forces are in the hands of my 
God." Then came the still, small voice. The 
proj)het went out strengthened for the service of 
the Lord, whose he was and whom he could trust. 

Now, dear friends, that is exactly the method by 
which God leads us all into the truth. All forces 
in the heavens above and the earth beneath are in 
God's hands to be used as He wills: for admoni- 
tion, for guidance, for comfort, for warning, for 
strength. But all men are not in the same relation- 
ship to God. "Was not the prodigal as truly the 
father's son, when he was in a far country, as 
when he was at home ? Was not Jesus Christ as 
truly the Son of God when He was on earth pro- 
claiming the message of salvation, as when He was 
in the bosom of the Father? It was necessary 
that He should come with this message of salvation, 
because through the long centuries Satan had 
blinded the eyes of the people and hardened their 
hearts, and far and wide was persuading men that 
God did not care for them. 

The truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ died, not 
to save sinners from the hands of an angry God, 
but He came and died to save sinners from their 



THE SURE PROMISE. 127 

sins, from themselves, from their unbelief, from 
their hardness of heart. It is true that God often 
has to treat men as though they were His enemies. 
He often appears to be severe and austere toward 
them. But that austerity takes on the form that it 
does because of the reality of His love for them. 
The fact is that the whole universe is tuned in eter- 
nal harmony to this truth. It was made to declare 
God everywhere and always; the unseen things of 
God being made manifest in the things that are 
seen; but because of evil the world has partly lost 
this original expression of the divine love and of the 
divine thought, and as man advances in his knowl- 
edge we have everywhere the story of God's pres- 
ence and of God's love. The geologist takes us to 
read with him the translation of it in the record of 
the rocks. If there is one form of science which 
to-day seems more advanced than another it is the 
science of astronomy. And what has it to tell ? — 
the story of God's love in that vast world beyond 
the natural gaze. 

Because God is everywhere, and the Father of us 
all, and all life is in His hand, it follows that the 
reward of Christian service is sure. In this way 
we interpret the Sermon on the Mount. How do 
we know the truth of such passages as these? — 
" Blessed are the pure, and the meek, and the mer- 
ciful." Because God reigns. Why should the salt 
" retain its savor," and the light " shine " ? Because 



128 THE SURE PROMISE. 

they are the work of God, and He has ordained 
that saving power shall come from salt, and shining 
shall come from light. Jesus says, " Pray for your 
enemies." Why? "That ye may be the children 
of your Father which is in Heaven." " When you 
pray be not like the Pharisee, who loves to stand on 
the street corners and make long prayers that he 
may be seen of men; but when you pray enter 
your closet and pray in secret." Why? Because 
your Father which seeth in secret shall reward 
you openly. " Ye cannot serve God and mammon " 
Why ? Because you will either love the one and hate 
the other, or else you will hold to the one and de- 
spise the other. " Take no thought, saying, what 
shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or where- 
withal shall we be clothed." Why? Because your 
Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these 
things. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
His righteousness." Why ? If you will serve your 
heavenly Father all things are yours, because all 
things are His. 

Thus the whole of the moral law unfolds itself 
from this central truth, and we at once begin to 
consider the position which we occupy in the 
universe. What is it? We are like a young 
prince in the royal gardens. He walks amid aU its 
beauties. Music and fruit and flowers abound on 
every hand. He may be inexperienced and igno- 
rant. He may not be permitted to pick the fruit 



THE SUKE PK0MI8E. 129 

or the flowers. He receives no wages, for he is not 
a servant. He is the son of the king. All these 
things are his to enjoy, his to dwell among ; to he 
his possession when the day shall come in which 
his father shall see that he is ready to receive them. 

Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, in the 
world which is His ! This is the large meaning of 
the text. " Seek first the kingdom of God"; make 
sure your relations to Him, "and ah things are 
yours." Shall I then have more than I have now ? 
If I am poor, shall I be rich ? If I am ill, shall I 
be made well ? If I am despised and rejected of 
men, shall I be honored ? Yes ! just so far as your 
Heavenly Father sees shall be best for you. Your 
life is in His hands. All things are His to give or 
to withhold according to His divine wisdom. Seek 
first Him, and the relations that connect themselves 
with Him, and all things are yours. 

Now, a few thoughts in conclusion. You see 
how manifest then is the duty that we should, every 
one of us, be a child of God. How many men are 
like the prodigal ; boasting of their father's wealth 
and living on husks. How many men have ob- 
tained from God their wealth and all they have in 
life, and then have wandered away from Him, abus- 
ing His love, despising His service, and trampling 
under foot His kingdom ; some even claiming that 
there is no God, and that if there is, He has no 
title to anything they possess. " I have earned this 



130 THE SURE PROMISE. 

money. I, through long years of toil and self-sac- 
rifice, have laid up this property. Shall I not do 
with it what I will ? " Shall such a one* feel that 
the Father is his ? Shall he expect that, when losses 
come, and health fails, and age advances, and that 
solitude which in time utterly isolates the self-lov- 
ing man, he shall find peace and rest in the Father's 
love ? 

Sickness is the servant of Go J, not of the devil. 
Property does not belong to Satan, it belongs to 
God. Death is no black demon, ending life to blast 
all our hopes. It is God's messenger. Am I then 
anxious and pressed hard with care ? Am I suffer- 
ing pain and sorrow ? Am I called to stand by the 
grave of those I love ? My Father in heaven knows. 
All power is in His hands ; all life is in His keep- 
ing. No care is too minute for Him. No labor 
wearies Him. If He is mine, I can trust Him ; and 
I can lean on His love. 

Then you see also how this ennobles and exalts 
our daily Life. At once all distinctions between 
things religious and things secular vanish. If I 
pray I serve God, and so I do when I labor. As 
truly when I go to my office, or store, or workshop, 
as when I go to church. On the street, as at the 
altar, I am in my Father's house and am trying to 
live as His child. How utterly impossible it is to 
make a distinction between things secular and 

He 



THE SURE PROMISE. 131 

was doing His Father's will as surely in the thirty 
years in which He dwelt in Nazareth, as in the 
three years in which He worked miracles and 
taught the disciples. So from the beginning to 
the end ; from His childhood in Nazareth to the 
cross in Jerusalem He was doing his Father's will ; 
so that at the close of His life He was able to say, 
■" Father, I have glorified Thy name on earth ; I 
have finished the work which Thou gavest me to 
do; and now I come to Thee." 

Here is the great truth for us. The temptation 
is to exalt rituals, and to think that, when 
in company with our brethren on certain set day3 
we attend the sanctuary, we worship Him, and that 
at all other times our lives are secular. We put 
Christ far off in some heavenly realm to which, 
perhaps, we hope to attain by and by, forgetting 
that He sent us to be His witnesses in the world, 
and that He has come into this world to abide and 
ihat here we are to do His will and to realize His 
love. How hard it is for us to learn that we can 
serve Him in disappointment, and in loss, and in 
pain, and in failure. How much there is in life that 
requires patience, and humility, and meekness, and 
walking softly, and waiting upon God ; until we 
come to know that not only the stars in their 
courses serve Him, but that we serve Him as well 
in all our daily life ; in the sweeping, and cleaning, 
.and mending, and the care of little children, and 



132 THE SURE PROMISE. 

work at the store or at the carpenter's bench ; that 
the tools we use are His ; that we are His, and that 
in the place He has put us we are trying to live 
restfully and faithfully for Hiin. Ah ! dear friends, 
here is the fundamental truth, " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God." Do not rest until deep in your 
heart you have become possessed of this truth, that 
God is your Father and Jesus Christ your elder 
brother. Settle that, and when you have settled it, 
go forth to your daily tasks, feeling the overshadow- 
ing wing of the Father and the blessedness of the 
divine love filling your life. "All these things'' 
shall then be added unto you, for " your Father 
knoweth that ye have need of these things." 



CHEIST AND THE POOR. 



" Ye have the poor with you always, and whenso- 
ever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have 
not always." — Mark xiv. 7. 



(134) 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 

rYN His way to Jerusalem for the last time, our 
^ Lord had stopped at Bethany, There, where 

Ho had often been, and doubtless bad many friends, 
for it was the borne of Lazarus, whom lie bad 
raised from the dead, a dinner was given Him at 

the house- of Simon the Leper. We do Dot Know 

who tbis Simon was, but there is every probability 
that lie, was one of the many who, during the past 
three years, bad been healed by our Lord. Ho was 
not a leper now, or ho could not have given a din- 
ner ; for lepers were outcasts. But he bad been, 
and the feast was an expression of bis gratitude, 

Naturally Lazarus was among those present to 
do honor to Jesus; and Martha, his sister, served. 

As the dinner was in progress, a woman, who John 

says was Mary, the ofber sister of Lazarus, came 

into the room, bearing a small jar of very precious 
perfume, and, breaking off tbe neel<, pound tbo 
contents upon flu; bead at:d person of tbe Master, 
as He reelined at tbe fable, and wiped Hi:: feet 

(upon which It ran) with her hair. The disciples, 
following the murmuring suggestion of Judas, pro- 
tested against the waste of the ointment. " Ct might 
have been sold for three hundred pence." "Yes, 

(185) 



136 CHRIST AJSTD THE POOR. 

more," says Mark, "and given to the poor." But 
Jesus quickly silences thein with the reply, " Let her 
alone. Why trouble ye her ? She hath wrought a 
good work upon me, for ye have the poor with 
you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them 
good, but me ye have not always." 

This answer arrests our attention. It is very dif- 
ferent from what we might have expected. Jesus 
knew that the murmuring arose with Judas, and 
we look to see Hiin vindicate Mary against her ac- 
cusers, but what a strange ground He takes. "Why 
does He not put them to shame by exposing Judas? 
or, if the time has not come for that, surely He will 
say something about hypocritical regard for the 
poor. Any waste that expresses love is better than 
the wisest charity that covers deceit. 

But this is not His answer. He exalts above 
charity of every kind the service which Mary has 
done to Him. " Let her alone, she hath wrought a 
good work on me." 

Bear in mind that our Lord takes this position at 
the close of a ministry which had been pre-eminent- 
ly a ministry to the poor. Shortly before He had 
declared that service done to the poor, at least in 
some cases, is to be regarded as done unto Himself. 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
He had always lived among the poor. He had 
time and again declared His sympathy to be with. 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 137 

them and against the rich. Had He not said, " How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
kingdom of heaven " ? Had He not said, " Blessed 
are ye poor," making the poor in purse a type of 
the poor in spirit ? 

"Was not the very first announcement of His min- 
istry, as He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth, 
the application to Himself of the words of the 
prophet, " The spirit of the Lord is upon me be- 
cause He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel 
to the poor " ? And did He not make this the sign 
of His coming, that " To the poor the Gospel is 
preached " ? But in the closing hours of His min- 
istry, when His words are weightiest, He seems to 
set care for the poor in contrast with devotion to 
Himself. They certainly are not to be regarded 
a,s identical ; and there may be conflict between 
them. 

It would seem that to-day the words gain a 
special importance and challenge us to a peculiar 
thoughtfulness. Charity is always beautiful. It is 
everywhere recognized as the great harmonizing 
force in this world of strife, selfishness, and greed. 
It is beneficent alike to the giver and the receiver. 
It has always been a chief function of the Christian 
church. The exclamation of the heathen at the out- 
set, " Behold, how these Christians love one anoth- 
er," was drawn forth by the abundant charities of 
the Christians, administered without regard to all 



138 CHRIST AND THE POOK. 

who were sick or in need. The church has not 
been slow to discern that its hold upon the world 
must largely depend upon the keenness of its inter- 
est in the condition of the poor and needy, and its 
success in ministering to them. Indeed, so far has 
this practice been carried, that the church at times 
has not been without blame for an abundance of 
alms which has spread pauperism, and even pro- 
moted crime. 

Every reform movement in the church has em- 
phasized and extended the work of charity. John 
Wesley gave to it no small share of his thought, 
and organized it into his ecclesiastical system ; and 
modern movements as extreme and narrow as that 
of the ritualistic party in the Church of England, 
has made of it a powerful lever to forward its 
cause. In societies for the care of all classes and 
conditions of men the churches to-day are leading 
the world. Whatever may be said by thoughtless 
accusers, the work of charity in this sad world is 
not only inspired by love in Christian hearts, but is 
largely in Christian hands. The church has nothing 
to accuse itself of in falling behind in its practices 
the teachings and spirit of its Master. 

But, when all this has been said, the text remains, 
with its suggestive utterance. It challenges our 
most serious thought. It calls on us to recognize 
that, after all, in charity we are only dealing with 
the surface of things. We are discovering in these 






CHRIST AND THE POOR. 139 

days how difficult it is truly to help even a single 
individual who may be in need — to help in such a 
way as to secure self-respect, manliness, and a per- 
manent bettering of his condition. And this even 
with the individual, to say nothing of the class. 

We are learning with new depth of conviction 
that each time of widespread need and each case of 
individual want is only an episode in a vast move- 
ment, a bubble, a drop from out the stream of life. 
We are made more and more aware of this as we 
look into the current that flows out of the past. 
We are part of the inheritance which we all share. 
We are heir to what has been called "the wreckage 
of the past"; the follies and evils of those who 
have gone before, the odds and ends that have sur- 
vived from extinct philosophies and civilizations, 
and the schemes of all kinds that have come 
down to us with their powerful results, and have 
united in making for us the life which we are living 
and of which we are a part 

The poor are but one product of this mighty con- 
geries of forces. They in no way differ in this re- 
spect from all else that we recognize as going to 
make up the life which we are living. As we are 
not permitted to choose the time or the place of 
our birth, so we cannot materially change the con- 
ditions under which we find ourselves. We long to 
change them. We are beset with theories to show 
how the desired change may be accomplished ; 



140 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 

theories of government, of society, of finance, of 
commerce, even of civilization itself. And theories 
of religion are not lacking, which, if adopted and 
applied, it is claimed, would quickly alter the whole 
structure of society. But the world is an old world. 
It has tried many experiments and seen many 
changes. It has modified itself greatly, chiefly as 
the result of influences which have been little un- 
derstood, and in obedience to laws as eternal as 
itself. And the patent fact to-day is that, straggle 
as he may, no man can escape from the power 
of these world-forces under which he finds himself 
living. He may swim a little to the right or the 
left in the stream. He may rise above the surface, 
or sink deeper into the depths, but when it comes 
to altering the current of the stream, the united 
labors of men, at best, seem to be able to deflect it 
but a little from one side to the other, never to 
arrest its course. This is prescribed for us by a 
power far above, and is determined by methods and 
purposes that were set long before we were in ex- 
istence, and will continue long after we are gone. 

" We have our day and cease to be," and there 
remains that in the stream of life which is not only 
more important than ourselves, but which, as related 
to the future, is so unfathomable, so enduring, so 
utterly beyond us, that we have small competence 
even to pass judgment upon it. 

What, then, is God's message to us ? It is that 



CHEIST AND THE POOR. 141 

in the midst of it all we fix our eyes upon the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and establish our hearts in the faith 
that centres in Him. We absorb ourselves in works 
of benevolence, our hearts are stirred and blessed 
by the care of the poor and the needy, but we must 
not fail to see that all we can do in these directions 
is as nothing compared with the power of Jesus 
Himself, as the one re-creating and renewing force 
by which the world is to be saved. The world was 
worn out when He came into it. Its civilization 
and its science, its learning and its experience had 
all failed to suggest any method by which the de- 
structive forces in its own heart could be arrested. 

The world was dying from the rottenness of its. 
own sins, and despair was fast settling down over 
it all. Mommsen closes his history of Rome with 
these words, " We have seen the end of the Roman 
republic. We have seen it brought to ruin in pol- 
itics and morals, religion and literature, not through 
outward violence, but through inward decay. There 
was in the world, as Csesar found it, much of the 
noble heritage of the past centuries and an infinite 
abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still 
less taste, and least of all delight in life. It was in- 
deed an old world, and even the gifted patriotism 
of Csesar could not make it young again." It is 
older now, and apart from Jesus Christ its ruin and 
its despair would be deeper to-day than when He 
came. He brought new life. Christian civilization 



112 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 

with all its amelioration of man's condition and all 
the hope for the future that is in it, came from Him 

The kingdom of heaven which He brought then 
was as the leaven to be hid in the meal, or the good 
seed to be planted in the field. It was a life new 
and distinct from the world into which it was intro- 
duced. "Without it there would continue to be the 
darkness of death, but wherever it was introduced 
it brought light ; and the light^has been contending 
with the darkness ever since. The world accepts 
civilization as we see it to-day as if it had always 
existed, and here and there turns away from the 
religion of Jesus Christ, falling back upon the pow- 
ers of civilization itself, as if there were life in it 
apart from Christ, but the essential fact is, that the 
only force which has the power to renew is that 
which is embodied in Jesus. 

The extent and the efficacy of this force can be 
witnessed any day in the lives of the men who have 
been changed by it. The drunkard, the prodigal, 
the outcast who but now were not only without 
God, but utterly without hope in the world, and 
for whom the world had no place, are to be seen 
new men and women. Not only new as related 
to the hope of heaven, and the favor of God, 
but new and different men as fathers and husbands 
and friends and citizens, clothed and in then- right 
mind, working strenuously for the good, where be- 
fore they were hopelessly surrendered to evil. 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 143 

The thought which the Saviour was pressing upon 
His disciples in the solemn hour when His death 
was near is, that however the heart may be stirred 
by the woes of our fellows, however the hands may 
busy themselves with the clothing of the naked and 
the feeding of the hungry, these labors have power 
in changing the conditions of life only when they 
«arry with them the life that comes with Jesus 
Christ, and are wrought in recognition of Him and 
in dependence upon Him for the gift of that new 
life, without which death and despair still reign. 
*' Without me ye can do nothing," is still the abid- 
ing truth. 

But, furthermore, we must not fail to see that 
Jesus Christ is to renew the world, and eventually 
to save it, by the change which He works in indi- 
viduals, and not by the reverse process of changing 
society first. 

This is one of the most patent facts in both the 
teaching and ministry of our Lord. He came 
to a nation trampled beneath the heel of its con- 
queror. He came to a people whose were the ora- 
cles of God, at that time under the dominion of 
heathenism, which was fast corrupting its youth and 
undermining the sanctions of its religious faith. 

He lived under a government represented by the 
atrocities and the vileness of the Herods, by the 
cruelty of Pilate, by the ruthlessness of the Eoman 
tax-gatherer, and the oppression of the Eoman sol- 



144 CHKIST AND THE POOR. 

dier ; He saw about Him a society in which 
the profligate and shameful vices of the Orient 
united with the coarser prodigalities of the "West, 
and in which money and rank and the lust of pow- 
er and the greed of gain produced such results that 
the great cities with all their luxury and elegance 
had come to be described as " cesspools " and 
"sewers"; and yet, finding Himself in these sur- 
roundings, He seemed to be entirely indifferent 
both to the form of government and the construc- 
tion of society, and, we may almost say, to the rela- 
tion of class to class. He pays tribute to Csesar, 
and exhorts His followers to do likewise. He says 
not a word against human slavery, or against any 
form of vice as being the vice of society, or as the 
outcome of the social conditions under which men 
were living. He does not even discuss the x>osition 
of -woman, the crowning shame of heathenism in all 
ages, and always related to the first step in every 
upward movement of men. 

That this was His real attitude is confirmed by 
the conduct of His disciples and followers. Every- 
where they taught subjection to those who were in 
authority, and the duty of prayer even for the 
heathen king. They exhorted the converted slave 
to return to his master ; and in no single instance 
are they found trying to overthrow the existing so- 
ciety, or to create a new world by first bringing 
about the destruction of the old. 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 145 

Anarchy and Nationalism are both equally aloof 
from the range of their thoughts. They want 
neither destruction of the government, nor help 
from it. Even after the government of Rome had 
come under their influence and the emperor on his 
throne proclaimed himself a Christian, the work of 
the Gospel was done as before, not by changing 
the form of the government, or the institutions 
which it had established, but by filling them with a 
new spirit. Indeed, one of the most remarkable 
facts in connection with the Justinian code — the 
summary of Roman law made in the sixth century 
— is the testimony it gives to the slight influence 
which Christianity had upon the administration of 
the empire. Instead of altering the law it contented 
itself with an indirect influence upon it. The im- 
press of its spirit is to be traced everywhere, but 
there is little or no evidence of purpose on the part 
of the Christians to reconstruct, organically, either 
society or the government. 

Undertaking the conquest of Rome, Christianity 
began with the mind and the heart of the individ- 
ual. It contented itself with introducing there new 
truth, evidencing itself in a new purity of life, and 
a new relation of the individual man to his brother; 
and it was this force, the introduction of Jesus into 
the heart of the believer, upon which Christianity 
relied for its final triumph in the world. 

Indeed, so uniform is the testimony to this truth, 



146 CHRIST AND THE POOE. 

and so indisputable is it, that it is entirely conceiv- 
able that, if Christianity had adopted a different 
course and had begun at once to grapple with the 
thousand questions of social life and of government, 
slavery, the ballot, woman's rights, the laws of prop- 
erty and so on, it would have been crushed; where- 
as, as it was, though swept by many floods, burned 
by many fires, and bearing testimony to the violence 
of many a storm, it has produced and is producing 
the fruits of progress and of reform which we to- 
pay are enjoying. The method of Christ, then, is 
to renew the world by changing the heart of the 
individual man ; and, when life has begun in his 
soul, by the force of that growing life to change, 
first his personal habits, and then through him the 
life and habits of his neighbor, and so, finally, the 
community as a whole. The new heavens and the 
new earth which are to mark the final triumph of 
the Lord are to begin in the character and life of 
the believer. 

But the great truth of the text is that there is a 
limit to the time in which this work can be done. 
" The poor ye have with you always, but me ye have 
not always." Both for our civilization and for our- 
selves the Saviour's warning is that a day may come 
when it will be too late to lay hold of and profit by 
the fife which He brings. 

The state may go on too long uninfluenced by 
His people, and by the recognition of the duties 



CHEIST AND THE POOR. 147 

■which He declares, the duty of man to man, and the 
duty of the state to reveal and hasten the oncoming 
of the kingdom of God in the earth ; in which case 
the state itself will be disciplined or overthrown. 
Witness, for example, France in the last century, or 
the United States itself as a slaveholding commu- 
nity. The possibility of ridding ourselves from negro 
slavery by the inherent force of Christian truth, and 
Christian brotherhood, working out from man to 
man, and so gradually creating a society which of 
itself would cast aside the fetters of the slave which 
were its peril and its shame, passed away, and in 
its stead God laid us under the necessity of freeing 
ourselves from the incubus by that terrible war 
which cost us so much in the best life of the nation, 
and under the evils of which we are yet suffering. 

Still more is this true of the individual. " Me ye 
have not always." You may have wealth and j)leas- 
ure and business. Head and hands may be full of 
problems of politics and of society, and of the 
needs of your fellow-men. You may be giving your- 
self with all your might to the reconstruction of 
the universe, or the remodeling of the government, 
or the casting out of Tammany, waiting, meanwhile, 
for leisure to find Christ for your personal Saviour, 
or to cultivate His love in your heart. The warn- 
ing of the text is that that hour may be too long 
deferred. 

There are times of decision with us all, crises of 



148 CHRIST AND THE POOR. 

character. He who would do good to his fellows 
can only be sure that what he strives for will result 
when he has himself found the life of Christ for his 
own soul, and is so sedulously cultivating that life 
and growing in the power of it that he can be 
assured that he is carrying Jesus Christ with him 
wherever he goes, and into whatever he does. The 
more your hearts are given to these acts of philan- 
thropy, the more your souls are stirred with the 
needs of your fellow-men, or the needs of this great 
city or this land that we all love, the deeper should 
you feel your need of constant communion with 
Christ, and all the fullness of His life possessing 
your own hearts. No matter how much of effort 
or of care and time it may take to win this posses- 
sion, these are days in which the Lord is pleading 
with you for Himself. He to-day is passing b}\ 
He sits with you in your home. He is a guest at 
your table. He goes with you to your place of 
business. He responds to the beating of your heart, 
with its wide sympathies for your feDows. He 
says again and again in your ear, " This ought ye to 
have done, and not leave the other undone. The 
poor ye have with you always, but me ye have not 
always." 

First, give yourself to me. First make sure of 
my place in your heart and in your life ; then set 
yourself to your task. When you can hear me say, 
" Lo, I am with you all the days," then no matter 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 149 

bow great the evil, or how perplexing the problems 
of the hour, " You shall say to this mountain, Be 
thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; and 
it shall obey you." For then the life of God is in 
you, and the power of God is working through you 
to bless the world. In a word, no man can effect- 
ually help his brother, until he has found abiding 
help for himself in Jesus Christ. 






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